Companies lavish attention on new hires.
They welcome the new hire, introduce them to the team, post photos, and announce that a new chapter is beginning. In these moments, everyone wants to showcase the organization’s culture, sense of community, and values.
Departures, on the other hand, are discussed much more quietly.
A person who has been part of the system for years can sometimes, overnight, become an inactive account, a returned computer, and a name that no longer appears in meetings. Their contribution is reduced to a few sentences, and the void they leave behind is quickly filled by a new schedule of responsibilities.
Not every departure is pleasant. People leave disappointed, tired, or angry. Sometimes they leave because they’ve found a better opportunity, and sometimes because they simply couldn’t stay any longer. Sometimes the company has wronged them. Sometimes they have wronged the company. Yet it is precisely when no shared interest holds the relationship together that the value of all that talk about respect becomes clear.
An organization’s culture isn’t measured only by how it treats a person while it needs them. It’s also measured by how it treats them once it knows it won’t get any more results, completed projects, or another year of work from them.
Those who remain observe all of this. They watch to see if years of contribution can be erased by a single unpleasant conversation. They watch to see if a former colleague is spoken of with respect or with relief. They watch to see if the company remembers the person or just the position that now needs to be filled again.
From this, they draw a far more serious conclusion than anything written in the company’s value statements. From the way you treat one person, those who remain conclude how you might treat them as well.
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