As Printed in the Employment Times
On the surface, resigning seems like a time
to speak your mind. You get to storm into the boss's office and
throw his chairs around while telling him to "take this job
and..." You get to tell your coworkers why you hated working
with them, you get to egg the building, you get the last
laugh.
But resigning is one of those things that is
not always what it seems. In reality, a resignation like that
would do nothing more than burn bridges and get building security
to respond in record time. Resigning with class is much more
difficult than throwing chairs.
"If you're leaving on a good relationship
with your supervisor, try to approach it as a partnership," Loren
Miller, a chair in the Executive Committee, said. "I'd try to put
myself in a position to work with the employer to make the
resignation a positive, maybe even work and help train the person who's supposed to replace you."
The old way of handing in a resignation was
to give a two-week notice, but in today's work atmosphere, that
normally is not enough time according to Miller. "Typically the
time to give is two weeks," Miller said. "Nobody knows where that
came from and there's no good reason for it. In today's market,
two weeks is insufficient. The more time you can give your
employer to prepare for your leaving...the better off both parties
would be. Two weeks is simply not enough time."
For the employer they need to make sure that
a system is in place for resignations. Possible requirements could
be: employers should have a policy set up stating how much time
they need for notice, whether or not there needs to be an exit
interview and the steps an employee needs to go through in order
to resign.
"We encourage employers to be legally
compliant and to be fair in enforcing the policy," Jessica Ollenburg, president of Human Resource Services, Inc., said. "If
you want people to give extra notice, be sure not to treat them
poorly (after they give notice)."
A worker who resigns may worry, with good
reason, about not being treated kindly by the employer while they
finish their work at the organization. The employer, on the other
hand, may worry about the worker not caring about the work and
doing a sloppy job. Both fears can be subsided if the organization
has a program rewarding work done after resigning according to
Ollenburg.
"A business can't afford to be strapped or
taken by surprise," Ollenburg said. "But they also don't want
employees who have already resigned to stay around with a
detrimental attitude. We would suggest that the employer would
create a policy requiring a great deal of notice and have bonuses
for not losing motivation. We encourage them to provide an
incentive to keep working."
After the resignation occurs, there are
still more things to prepare for and to be aware of. First of all,
there should be a job lined up waiting for you to step into. If
not, you need to be thinking about health care and retirement
funds, according to Miller.
"If (the employee) is not going to have
health care for a period of time, (the employee) needs to see how
long they can remain on their plan and figure out how much it
would cost," Miller said. "For your 401K plan, be careful about
not getting it into a taxable system. You should talk to a
financial advisor for a sensible transition of that money. You
definitely don't want to mess that up."
Besides being prepared with money issues,
you also need to be ready for a possible exit interview. All exit
interviews are different, but Ollenburg advises that some ways are
more effective than others.
"Very often there's a psychological dynamic
going on between the employer and the employee," Ollenburg said.
"The person who resigned feels the need to justify it and may
embellish or exaggerate circumstances in their own minds. The
individual just may need to vent. The company needs to consider
what's the truth and what might be embellished. The interview
should be structured so they only ask for information that can be
verified by a third party."
"Take it beyond finding out why someone
left. The company should find out why they weren't the right
person for the job long-term and then use that in future
screening."
Resigning can be even more difficult when
the employee and the supervisor are not on good terms. Not only is
there more tension in the actual resignation, but there is also
the problem of future references from the employer, according to
Miller. "Doing it (turning in your resignation) in writing is a
must," Miller said. "Later arguments can come up about quitting
versus resigning and writing a letter cements the whole thing.
Although if I'm having trouble with the supervisor, my biggest
fear is future references.
"I would want to sit down with the boss with
an outline of my reasons for leaving and my qualifications and my
accomplishments. Doing that also frees the boss, because they can
be held liable for giving a negative review. If he can create an
agreement on what to say, both people are off the
hook."
by Casey
Murray, March 25,
1999
