Employee offboarding just as important as onboarding

There is a lot of discussion these days about new hire onboarding. Most managers and HR personnel agree that how an employee is brought into the organization determines the employee’s success with the organization. If the employee is warmly welcomed, instructed, and guided, the organization will likely get a glowing review. If not, word can spread quickly and, perhaps, jeopardize chances with future prospective employees. But just as a company’s onboarding practices can elevate or diminish organizational reputations, so can their offboarding practices.

Of course, there are tales of wild employee firings and resignations in which HR staff and managers are caught off-guard and have little time to react but those separations are the exception. In today’s mobile workforce, employees leaving a company are commonplace so that companies have no excuse for not being prepared when an employee leaves.

While many employers understand that offboarding an employee generally entails retrieving company property and issuing COBRA and HIPPA forms, few take this as an opportunity for the company to learn why an employee wants to leave. After all, if an employee is satisfied with their company, they wouldn’t leave. This means there is a deficiency somewhere in the organization and a carefully executed offboarding plan can help uncover this information.

There will be times that no matter how fantastic an organization, an employee wants or needs another challenge, more money, or to just try something new. These situations cannot always be remedied. It is when an employee is leaving because they are dissatisfied – with management, conditions, lack of opportunity – that a good offboarding plan can help the organization learn.

To learn more about effective offboarding practices, read Elizabeth Galatine’s, Off-boarding market opportunities grow as more employees are let go.

What your boredom tolerance may be telling you - and employers

A friend who runs his own hair salon tells me that he now wants to be a t-shirt vendor on the island of St. Maarten in the Caribbean during the months his business is slow. Aside from posing problems for his year-round salon customers – after all, who will be taking care of them of them while he is off hawking souvenir shirts to tourists? – this raises another question: Are we only supposed to have one career?

In an earlier post, I wrote about the need to specialize in something if you are to be successful. Orville Redenbacher, of popcorn fame, once said the same thing. But, what happens when you have a number of interests and abilities? If exploring each of them, does this pigeonhole you as a jack-of-all-trades and master of none? Can that limit your career opportunities? Jack Ferris’ article, The Top 5 Reasons to be a Jack of all Trades, gives strong support for not honing in on one specific career – boredom being chief among them. I am not yet ready to reverse my stance on specialization but it seems that if boredom is what drives employees to seek other career adventures, then should organizations do something to keep things revved up a bit – especially if they value that employee who likely will become bored?

Corporate types may view people who are easily bored as not being able to focus on the task at hand. Like elementary schools, however, organizations are often operated to support the weakest student, not the highest performing. High performers who can rapidly process information, quickly arrive at sound decisions, and are always future thinking, are seen as agitators, troublemakers, and high maintenance. I can say, unequivocally, that this is probably true. (OK, so I give myself a little latitude here.) Ironically, though, these personal attributes are what companies typically look for when hiring but are aghast when the employee actually fulfills the prophecy.

There may not be a happy medium in this case, with organizations trying to keep things running on an even keel while employees are looking to broaden their horizons. (Perhaps I could have fit in one more cliché?) If you find you are one of those people who becomes easily bored, take heart. As Ferris reminds, “Lack of intellectual stimulation, not superlative material wealth, is what drives us to depression and emotional bankruptcy. Generalizing and experimenting prevents this, while over-specialization guarantees it”.

The significance of Gianni: A reminder of the power of flow.

Gianni is my beautiful and intelligent niece. Currently finishing up an undergrad degree before going onto her doctorate work in Psychology/Criminal Justice, Gianni reminds me that, sometimes, we all, even the ones making claims, need to be reminded of our own messages. In a recent email from my lovely niece, she recalled something I said to her many years ago …

She writes, “… you always told me that whatever I do in life, to make sure that I absolutely love it!! I think you called it something, anyway, you said I would know what it is when I get so wrapped up in it, that time seems to disappear, and I become transformed into this tunnel-vision that puts me on this whole other level. You told me that was my passion and I should follow it”.

She is writing about being in the state of flow. Author Mihaly Csikzentmihalyi defines and elaborates on this concept in his book, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. In flow, time is suspended and work is seemingly effortless. It also signifies that we are on the right track in doing what we are intended to do. Unfortunately, we sometimes find that our circumstances – or fears – keep driving us to work that we will never, ever be immersed in or committed to. This is a cautionary tale, then, for those who wish to jam square pegs into round holes as a means to simply make a living. If this is the case, optimal experiences will be few and far between and that certainly isn’t a life.

Why do so many avoid living in a flow state? It may be because of the perceived sacrifices this conjures, especially if the career you truly need produces a different lifestyle than you now enjoy. This is how the term, golden handcuffs, came about; people locked into jobs they dislike but do it because it generates a nice lifestyle. That’s fine if attaining a particular lifestyle is your only goal. I prefer, however, to believe people are looking for that right fit career where flow is not just an occasional experience but a lifetime of total immersion and governed by their own standards. As Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1990) wrote:

The solution is to gradually become free of societal rewards and learn how to substitute for them rewards that are under one's own powers. This is not to say that we should abandon every goal endorsed by society; rather, it means that, in addition to or instead of the goals others use to bribe us with, we develop a set of our own.