Human Resource Management

Off late I have been hearing a lot of stories about the movement of people across organizations and as I have already written,it is a direct consequence of the Talent crunch we are facing world over. So here is a story which I picked up from my roommate and close friend about yet another guy switching companies in search of greener pastures.

The Protagonist here is considered the superhero by his boss and colleagues alike and everyone really appreciates the extra mile he stretches in order to complete his work and also help the other colleagues' in delivering results. Our superhero after spending more than a year with company realizes that the company's growth plans are not matching his own growth plans(in terms of Moving up the value chain and also with respect to rate of growth). So he decides to move on and sends the dreaded (to the management) email with subject line "resignation".

But 3 days into his resignation, while the whole floor knows that he is moving on and is already discussing "what next?", the management team has not discussed the matter with our superhero. The least a guy who decides to move on expects from the management is a 10 minutes honest face to face talk. But here the management team in question does not even bother. This seems to really puzzle our superhero and finally after waiting for 3 more days, he himself walks to the corner office on the floor to speak to the so called "Unit Manager" and get his resignation accepted. In contrast, when the superhero had left his earlier company to join the current one, the Vice President of the company had walked up to him to talk about the resignation.

If a person who is considered to be the superhero by one and all in the floor decides to quit and the management does not even care to talk to him, let alone stop him from leaving, what kind of message is going down to the junior staff and the others on the floor ? "I as the company's employee am not being valued by the management and this could happen to me as well tomorrow". So even if the superhero is not perceived well by the management team, the least they can do is have a face to face talk and get to understand the reasons for moving on.

As an organization, we need to make sure that every person on the payroll gets his due not just in terms of paycheck, but also in terms of the basic human respect. And the most a person needs this respect is when has decided to move on. Also in situations like this, the organizations can uncover some larger issue (may be something is wrong with one of the line manager?). So I certainly believe that this organization is forgetting one of the basic tenets of Human Capital Management.(And the fact that it is a consulting company makes things worse. People are the only asset a consulting company has.)

My friend has already decided to move on from this company (see this is the ripple effect I am talking ) as he is one of the most junior staff there and he revered our superhero and took him to be his role model.