Your Star Employee Just Quit. Will Others Follow

This resource first appeared in issue #58 on 22 Jan 2021 and has tags Becoming A Manager: Offboarding, Managing A Team: Other

Your Star Employee Just Quit. Will Others Follow - Art Markman, HBR

Maintaining a strong team isn’t an activity that ever stops. We need to actively, constantly, be building the team - by supporting team members development and career goals, by giving them new challenges, and by bringing in new team members or developing and keeping an eye on a “bench” of possible candidates.

It’s not necessarily indicative of a problem by itself that the member is leaving - it’s good and healthy for people to move on into other roles. We should be actively helping people prepare to take on more responsibilities, including new roles!

But when a key team member leaves, it can have cascading consequences. Workload goes up, a trusted peer is gone, and remaining team members now feel uncertain about a workplace that previously felt pretty solid.

Markman recommends doing a thoughtful exit interview with the outgoing team member. It’s a valuable opportunity to get perspective of what you and the team can do better, from someone who can afford an extra bit of candour as they leave. It’s also important to assess if they were “shields down” to other opportunities for reasons that we could have influenced.

Then he recommends doubling down on things we should be doing at some level all the time anyway:

One-on-ones with the other team members, to take their pulse, seen how they’re doing;
Focus on the future and the goals of the team, make sure everyone’s aligned on what’s next - make the future seem less uncertain; and
Provide career development opportunities for the remaining team members, not just for them to fill in for the departing team member but for them to grow their own capabilities as individuals.