How to finesse an employee exit

You’ve heard the saying how you get them is how you lose them.?

And this phrase could not ring any more accurate regarding your employee experience.?

If you’re a relatively established Founder of a startup 2-6 years into scaling, you’ll have a few chilling stories about how losing an employee materialised in reality.?

It probably went something like this: You found a couple of potential employees from your social media network or friends of friends, and they were so passionate about your mission. An unprepared interview followed; you hired the misaligned ‘fans’ solely for potential rather than experience; the inevitable bad breakup ensued five months later.?

While a shoddy recruitment strategy isn’t always the reason people walk away - if you take a deeper look, you likely had a hunch that being unprepared during the recruitment stage would eventually contribute to a few tumultuous employee exits.?

Losing a superstar hurts

Losing an employee, who you sourced, selected, interviewed, onboarded, and trained is hard. Not only for your feelings but your team's morale, your supplier's and customer's confidence in your service and the company’s revenue, so starting as you mean to go on is essential.?

I’m not so idealistic that I believe employees will never leave, but having a well-planned and prepared recruitment strategy will help an employee exit be less sudden and damaging to your employer brand.??

A good recruitment process can help to manage expectations and allow everyone to hear, experience and understand how things work and what development opportunities might be needed. This planned process supports you with building retention initiatives into your employee experience, which helps to lengthen and strengthen an employee's time at your company.?

Hire with retention in mind

Your interview process should resonate with the values you share with the public. It should be clear, fully set the scene of your company's vision and mission, and help manage expectations. Suppose you’re late for interviews or are indecisive about where or when you’d like to meet with potential employees. The prospective employees will likely think this is how things work in your environment and how they might be treated or encouraged to behave when they work with you.?

“I once attended an interview with two co-founders who forgot they had arranged to meet me. The interview was quite rushed, with bizarre and illogical questions. I was offered the job, but I politely declined it because I couldn’t imagine working with people who had subconsciously demonstrated how people are treated in their work environment? “?

- Cultured Insights Member.

What you do during your hiring process and how you manage your interview and recruitment processes will be the driver behind whether someone views your company as a highway motel, a short stop-gap or somewhere they can visualise themselves growing and developing.

Saying goodbye shouldn’t be a traumatic event.?

It might be hard for you and your team to imagine a future without their star player if your hiring process is erratic, unplanned and inconsistent. You might be reminded of challenges in the organisation and how long it takes to develop new people,? which will make you and your team feel overwhelmed and driven to react rather than manage someone's resignation well.? So before any of your team hits the door, there's a lot of important work to be done to make people know that there's still a chance to make something good out of a tough situation and not dependent on unpredictable emotions.?

Employees with a positive exit experience are 2.9 times more likely to recommend their organisation to others than those with neutral or negative experiences. Highly talented individuals are more likely to network and socialise with other highly talented individuals who, if your hiring and exit processes are done right, could eventually become new employees in no time.

In today’s exponentially changing work culture landscape, flexibility and people-centred approaches are benefits for scaling organisations that will attract and retain qualified, enthusiastic and keen talent. Building scalable employee experience processes focused on retention is a crucial practice that will help your vision of growing a team with passionate and fulfilled employees come alive and limit the risk of jeopardising your company’s growth, mission, and culture.

About the author        

Dannique Blake is the Founder of Cultured Insights and a people & culture specialist for scaling brands. She helps Founders create work cultures where people belong, and businesses can thrive.?