Before you let you company know you're leaving, there are some steps to smooth the transition and avoid burning bridges.
Hopefully at this time you already have another job offer, or even something better planned. Or maybe this wasn’t your choice, and you want to make sure you leave on a positive note. Leaving might be hard, but a poor exit may actually be damaging to your career.
Let's create a plan to make your departure successful
- Have clear goals of why you are leaving
- Remove all personal info from your work devices
- Prepare a high level handover plan
- Book some one on one time with your manager.
- Would you accept a counter offer?
- Prepare your handover
- Last days in the job.
A lot of the guidance on the internet is tailored to the American market of two weeks notice. In the countries I have worked, the employment contract has a notice period of a month or so, or more for senior roles. There is more time to make a graceful exit, and the contracted expectation of a sustained work effort during that time. The industries are often a bit smaller, so burning bridges will limit future opportunities. So this is written with the intention of use your time wisely to create a calm exit, and look after your future opportunities.
Have clear reasons and goals for your departure
Remember to be clear on what your reasons for leaving and your goals for the future. Why did you accept the new role? Was it about money? The industry you’re moving to? The commute? Remember to focus on the future, and not on the things you don't like about the present role.
This is going to be a hard conversation, so being able to articulate why you are leaving is so important. Practice the short elevator pitch version of the reason. For example “The commute is too long,” “this opportunity was perfect for my long term career,” “I want to get experience in this new industry.”
Do not discuss the current workplace as the source of the departure, as this will feel like you are blaming the manager. You're not going to fix whatever your are unhappy about by leaving. So there is no point bringing it up.
Having a clear consistent story lowers the doubt in your head and in your colleagues. It allows you to stay focussed during the remainder of your time on the bigger goal. Plus there is less room for gossip of why you are leaving.
Removed all personal info from your work devices
If you have any personal information on your work laptop, now is the time to remove it. You might get told to leave immediately and risk losing it all. Plus you really shouldn’t mix your work life with your personal life.
Transfer your data to a personal account / drive and delete it entirely of your work device. Sign out of your online personal accounts like in Chrome, Dropbox, Google Drive or the like. Flush your cache and delete your browser history. The same applies to laptops as tablets and phones.
Do not delete any work documents or emails from your laptop. That just looks petty and makes people suspicious.
Any good IT department can probably find all this again, but if you leave gracefully they won’t go looking for it.
What kind of handover plan should you prepare?
Preparing a handover plan will help your manager see that your intentions are still good, even though you are leaving. Right now you are only showing the intention, this may not be the actual plan.
Make out a list of everything you have worked on recently, and everything you will be working on. Ask yourself, who could take this over? Could it be done by a peer, your team or the manager? Could it be parked or stopped altogether?
Work through the list. Document the task, the priority, what work needs to be done, who might be able to do it, and who is affected by this.
As a manager this forward thinking and documentation helps lowers any risk for the management and the organisation. Managers only know their team's activities at the high level, and trust them to sort out the detail. Having the structured list gives a convenient framework to work through the next steps as the employee leaves.
Book one on one time with your manager.
The scariest message or meeting request I ever get starts with "Do you have some time to talk today?"
Managers are in constant fear that their people are going to leave. Work is currently getting done by people who understand the work. If you leave then they’ll need to find someone and train them up, which is at least 3 months of extra work during that time. Therefore they are deeply suspicious of any meeting that sounds like an out of cycle career discussion.
In the past I have found it easier to add my departure discussion to the usual one on one meeting. Or add it to an existing meeting that involved your boss where you can stay longer for “one more thing.”
If no such opportunity exists them simply book a short meeting that says something like “one to one”, or “status update”
Like any conversation where there is shocking news, it is best to keep your message short and to the point. And then wait while they process it. Do not keep talking or try to soften the blow. Your manager is going to need some time to process it. Use the handover document as a way to frame to conversation and stay on track.
Should you accept a counter offer?
Generally you should not.
If you get a counter offer it can be gratifying that the company values you so much to increase your salary. But you need to look at your goals that got you looking in the first place. Does the additional money, stock, offer match your goal?
If you have gone to all the effort to find another job you are showing you are committed to finding a new career. You have probably researched a set of new companies, gone through interviews, and talked about salary. Mentally you have probably already checked out of the new job, and looking forward to the future.
Studies have shown that people who take counter offers only last one additional year anyway. Anecdotally you hear stories about managers who feel betrayed and treat the employee poorly afterwards. You may get labelled as a traitor and flight risk.
If money is the key issue that will make you stay, then you probably should have had that discussion with your manager before you got this far. Managers are much more receptive to research and data on the market and giving them time to get approval, than to ultimatums of "pay me more or I will leave"
I know of times where the only way to get a pay rise or new role was to present a competing offer. This can actually be a response to external market pressure, as the company doesn’t want to increase salaries in response to every bump in the market. This approach makes the employee take some risk - what if they don't counter offer? If this is true you need to be prepared to leave in case you don't get the counter-offer.
Prepare your handover
Update your initial list, and build upon it with all the feedback from your manager. There will be more items, and more detail needed.
One of the considerations is who should know about your departure and when? Your manager will immediately let the their chain of command know, but they likely will not let any of your peers know. So you will need to plan how the news is spread - I think of this as radiating outwards from you. Your immediate team or any long term friends should know first, then your peers, then other groups. Your closer colleagues may want to discuss it with you as they will want to understand your reasons, the wider groups less so.
Work through your updated list, and share it with your team. Previously we would get people to add it to a knowledge base like Confluence or SharePoint. Then the list can become a jump off point for all data and links if people need to follow after you are gone.
Book handover meetings with the person you are handing it over to. Make it clear that their name is on the project now. Go through all your task tracking tools like Jira, Trello, Asana, etc and reallocate your tasks to the new person.
Wrapping up in the last days
Work through your list regularly with your manager, highlighting the status of each item, and who is looking after the task. Make sure you are handing over everything you know.
HR may ask you to attend an exit interview to get a better understanding of why you are leaving. While you want to give honest answers to help your team, you don't want to just complain in the interview. You definitely don't want to make snappy comments that will get recorded, summarised and presented to management. You risk getting labelled as a complainer. If you do the interview, ensure all feedback is constructive and does not mention names.
If you can, book a final lunch for the team. Go out on a positive note with upbeat energy.
Prepare your exit email. Keep it short. Thank everyone, wish everyone success and offer contact details and linkedin accounts.
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