Post-Mortem: Helping or Hole Digging?

I got a response to my thank you note from that leader who said all those nice things about me at the conference (which I didn’t get to attend). He stated that he meant every word and thought our company had lost a great employee. Then he added a paragraph asking me why I had not talked to anyone about this. Knowing that one of our Diversity Group’s goals was retention, he was struggling with the question of why I wouldn’t bring it up earlier. Why didn’t I come to him?

I must give him credit for the extremely politically correct way he phrased his question. He did not seem confrontational, and it appeared as though he was simply gathering feedback.

My REAL response to that would have been: what was the point? If I had brought it up BEFORE getting an actual offer, and the offer had fallen through, I would have been identified as someone who wants to jump ship, and that may have affected my future in the company (why invest on an employee who has one foot out the door?). If I had said something AFTER getting an offer, then I would have looked as if I was seeking a counter offer, which, again, rarely ever works to the employee’s advantage and almost never results in the employee staying for longer than a year after that.

Speaking up before making a decision was a lose for me, anyway you look at it. Why put myself through that?

But that’s not what I answered. I stuck to my script: I was not looking to leave, I was not unhappy, a friend forwarded me the description and I just couldn’t deny myself my dream of working in a hospital environment. There was nothing my company could do.

However, I did have some feedback for them.

The Diversity Group organization, of which I was a Chapter President for the Boston area, is a great networking vehicle for minorities in the company. We have a strong support group and we do good things for the community. The problem is that the Diversity Group’s leadership is composed of executives that may or many not work in your division. What it ends up being is sort of like working for two completely separate and disjointed organizations: your real work organization, and the Diversity Group organization.

In my case, I was a SUPER STAR in the Diversity Group org. When I said I was leaving I got calls from everybody in that hierarchy: why was I leaving? Why didn’t I talk to them? What could they have done to prevent this from happening? However, I got absolutely no calls from my real work organization. My bosses were very politically correct, said all the right things “we hate to lose you, what can we do to keep you” but there was no passion behind it. After all, I had been a member of the Diversity Group team for 7 years, but had only been at my latest role for 8 months. There was absolutely no attachment to my coworkers, so they didn’t “feel the hit” of losing me the way that the Diversity Group did.

So I told him so. Is there any way to make the Diversity Group feel more like it counts with the support of your real work organization? I could not think of very good suggestions on how to do that, but all I could say was that my manager had NO IDEA that I had a whole list of executives across the business who were shocked at my departure. No clue whatsoever.

Does this help the organization? I would like to think so… the leader replied almost right away thanking me for my thoughtful response, that he would take my points to the leadership for further discussion, and agreed we should have a beer next time he was in town.

So, did I just dig myself into a deeper hole? or did I help retention for that organization?

I just don’t know… I would never advise someone to share feelings about why they left a company with someone who is there. But I felt this was a good point, not personal, that they could really take back and perhaps work on.

I don’t know… I really don’t know…

abi