The Corporate Trust Deficit (CTD)

I conducted this poll a few days ago, as I was always curious that why employees who are leaving an organization often hide the details of the new employer. They will say that I will tell you as soon as I join the new company as if they are superstitious about it. This trend of hiding new employer is so common that even first-time job switchers too start following it religiously without understanding the purpose behind it.

While I always believed that it is superstition only, I thought of conducting this poll to get some real responses from real people, so I offered them above mentioned four options and was hoping to get my assumption of 'superstition' to get maximum votes.

The responses from people were eye-opening yet worrisome for me, as two-third of the respondents believed, sharing their new employer's name with their current employer/ manager can result in some sort of conspiracy, where their current employer will go to the new employer and bad mouth about them so much so that they will lose this opportunity. At least their current manager will try to malign their rapport with the new organization/ manager which would create a hurdle in their career growth further.

Coming from HR, one thing I can say based on my own experiences, that No manager or a professional organization will do so. Killing one's employment opportunity in the market is not the right method of retention and neither a pragmatic or sensible one.

However, this poll does tell us how much an exiting employee distrusts his current manager or organization. I recall 15 years ago it wasn't like that. People used to tell their team members about their exit and new organization as soon as they resigned and they were relieved also soon with mutual convenience. These days we seldom see people being relieved without serving for a quarter as notice period, and they keep on hiding their new employer's name like a top-secret. Their team members get to know about their new job via a linked-in update and the worst part is many of them stay active in the job market during their entire notice period.

I think these all are linked to each other. An employee resigns as he is not happy with his manager (the most common scenario).

He/She hides his new opportunity in hand from his manager and HR.

They punish him for this distrust and make him serve till the last minute of his/ her notice period.

He keeps on exploring better offers in the market to eventually revenge his/her forceful retention for the full notice period.

So on and so forth.

Sounds petty, But this is the reality in most cases.

Manager and employees relations are seldom very pleasant, but when they start hating each other and distrust each other we land up in a scenario like this. And if we want to change it we need to develop more trust between employees and the manager. In spite of target pressure or tough working conditions, they need to trust each other and treat exits more humanely.

It will take a long time to completely undo this situation but the first step has to be taken by Managers only. Afterall...

“Trust is a good business practice.”

— Jim Blasingame