Let's start noticing our notice period?

Someone wise said, “Do what you believe is right, even if it means standing against the norms" (Yes, I did replace alone with 'against the norms')

Yes, there are a lot of LinkedIn posts on people's hypocritical behaviour while they are recruiting. For example: How we look for people having lower notice periods while our own organizations have 90 days of notice period. Hence, I thought of writing a detailed article on the same.

Let’s start with the cons of the 90 day notice period. Here are a few points that come top of mind :

• Reduced productivity of people serving notice period : In some cases they end up sending the same vibes across their team even if it is unintentional.?
• Increase in peer resignations : If an employee has got a new & better opportunity, a longer notice period definitely gives him more time to influence his peers.??
• Overall increase in the recruitment efforts : If I have offered a role to a person having a 90 day notice period, chances of him/her joining at the end of that marathon period is slimmer when compared to someone having a relatively shorter notice.?
• Issues in resource management : A lot of Project/Product Managers might hesitate onboarding an employee serving notice period on their projects because it might affect the team morale & they would have to figure out replacement after 60-90 days. Hence, in a lot of cases the employee on notice ends up being a costly resource with lower returns.?
• Can lead to the start of favouritism and blame games : Imagine letting someone go in 45 days and asking another employee to serve a complete 60 days notice!?

Let’s now delve on?the pros of having a longer notice period?:

• You may get enough time to find a replacement as a hiring manager
• As a job seeker you might get enough time to find 3-4 opportunities and join the one which pleases you the most. Off late I have started seeing these posts like, “I have offers from Amazon, Microsoft, & etc. and I have decided to join XYZ company.”?
• And maybe it helps in…! Really couldn’t think of anything else

Now arises the question: if that’s the comparison list, then why do a majority of?companies in India still have such long notice periods? It might be a strategy to retain people or maybe we have reached that stage where knowing that everyone around has longer notice periods, people might hesitate to reduce their own companies notice periods.

All in all, if you think about it rationally like it's been said a lot in the last few months that 2 weeks is the optimal time for KT & a notice period longer than that doesn’t make sense in any way.?

My own organization had a 45 day notice period and we did get a lot of feedback on how we should reduce it to a month. Though a lot of techies we interview have 60 days of notice period on an average. But again we believed in doing what’s right and reduced our notice period to 15 days knowing that a KT would take 2 weeks even in the worst case scenario possible.

How did it help us??

So far we are just happy to do something ethical & right and we hope people across the country will follow the same.

What challenges are we facing?

People do leave us in 2 weeks after filing their resignation. However, our replacement time remains the same i.e. 20-30 days on an average to close someone & then whatever notice period they have, varies between 30-90 days (60 days on an average in most of the cases). But again it’s really not much of a challenge. Eventually it’s about having enough resources in the pipeline.?

How are we dealing with it?

We have always been a company that focuses on culture first. Hence, our recruitment process is ever evolving wherein we try to ensure people have an experience rather than a Q&A session. We are also trying to make our pre-onboarding much more interactive. So all in all we just hope people know how nice we are and they should definitely not ditch us and even if they plan to do it’s not right before the day of joining (that always breaks my heart!)

If there is an employee who wants to leave your organization then it's not right to forcefully make that person stay for a longer duration when you can easily relieve them sooner.

Cutting to the chase, it really doesn’t make sense to have more than 15 days notice period & it’s high time we change this old norm for the collective good.?

Hope you had a good read. Thanks:)?