Are 2 Week Notices Still Necessary?
By: Aaron Webber
Tags: Self Improvement, Management, Leadership, Life Lessons, Business

When an employee intends to leave, some companies ask them to leave immediately, and others ask for some kind of notice, usually two weeks. Which is the better policy, and how do you decide which to use?

The answer to this is obvious, unambiguous, and firm: it all depends.

It depends on whether they’re giving notice or whether you’re giving them notice. It depends on the legislative or regulatory environment in which you operate.

The reason it depends is because there are a whole bunch of factors that factor into that decision and that practice. I would suggest that you define, as an organization, your philosophical underpinning. What are you going to say when someone hands in their notice? Are they always going to be immediate? In that case, certain dominoes then fall as a consequence. If you decide that no, we will always give or require two weeks notice, then different dominoes fall as a consequence.

Some of the dominoes to consider, in formulating that default position, are the following:

What is the workload and the rhythm of that workload? What are the unique deliverables that the team or the individual is working on at the moment? How complicated is, and are, the handoffs from that person to their replacement? What is the general organizational culture and environment that you want to create?

The answers to these questions speak to the selection of that default methodology.

I’ve learned there is an illuminating experience that occurs when someone leaves, particularly when they’re invited to leave.

I am universally (and I think most managers are) bad at estimating the way people will depart. There have been some people that I have thought were loyal, wonderful employees, who gave notice or we gave them notice and we let the two weeks run because it seemed graceful and appropriate. During that time, they reverted to their true nature.

They were undermining, submarining and, frankly, exhibiting entirely inappropriate behavior: copying and taking home files, complaining to the rest of the team, finally telling their boss and the rest of the team what they actually thought of them, etc. They demonstrated a true negative cost to the organization’s DNA, in which case we probably shouldn’t have given them two weeks notice and should have walked them out the door at the moment.

Others, who I was concerned about because they weren’t necessarily a great employee, were needed to stay for two weeks in terms of transition. Some of those folks that have left wonderfully well, extremely graciously, and couldn’t have done more to affect a positive transition. They couldn’t have been more helpful to the team and to their replacement. They genuinely surprised me with their wonderful, true nature, when I’d assumed incorrectly.

The point here is this: when the shackles are off, and someone has a firm date for when they’re leaving, generally their true nature begins to show through. I wish that I could have hired them on the basis of their true nature. In fact, the joke that I sometimes use is that we should fire everybody and then hire back those that leave well, because then you’re hiring back the right ones, understanding fully and completely their true and accurate nature.

Now, of course, you can’t do that. And the selection and interview and hiring process is designed as best as possible to discover that, but that’s some food for thought.

In the two weeks notice versus no two weeks notice question, I generally fall on the side of giving or requiring notice. It sets up a much more graceful transition. It allows for a more elegant incoming and outgoing flow and it seems much more respectful to both the organization, the team, and coworkers and to the individual.

Having said that, however, I watch very carefully and control access to files, tools and data during those 2 weeks to save people, many times, from themselves.

A great line from the movie The Italian Job is:

“I trust people, I just don’t trust the devil inside them.”

And when the organizational employment constraints are taken off them, sometimes people (to their own surprise) operate sub-optimally. My job, my assignment as a leader and as a manager, is to create an environment around them that will not only cause them to not want to leave in the first place, but if they do leave, the transition is as graceful, elegant and respectful as possible.

The idea being that they would want to come back and we would welcome them back when and if circumstances changed.

Those would be my thoughts on immediately walking out the door versus giving or receiving notice. Again, it’s all dependent on the culture and the style and the personality that you want to demonstrate to your organization, which you want to have personified amongst your team and individuals.