I have a very good friend that we will call Charles who works for a huge global company of around 30,000 employees. Charles has worked for this company for 21 years, and recently decided to resign. Charles felt that he had grown all that he could in his current role and has chosen to move on.
He dutifully called the HR department to respectfully give his 2 weeks notice. He was told that in order to resign, he had to go to the company website, find the HR page and click on the link to resign.
Oh, it gets better.
Then, he had 14 days to “change his mind”. All he had to do was to go back to the company website, click on the HR page, find his resignation and click cancel.
In that 2-week period, no human being reached out to him. No one told his team. There was no one to turn his equipment into. He left with zero fanfare. After 21 years.
Please keep in mind that this company will pay $10,000 for any referral that becomes a full-time employee.
And we wonder why our employees aren’t more fully engaged at work. Perhaps it is time to put the “human” back into human resources.