What You Feel: Frustrated

Perspective: Whether you are selling a product to businesses or consumers, your brand will largely be based on the experiences of customers.  Don’t underestimate, however, how that brand is impacted by the experiences of employees.  How you treat people in general, and especially when they leave the organization, can have a meaningful impact on your company’s reputation.

When individuals choose to leave, sometimes our concern for the business, the gap that is left and our insecurity causes us to act inappropriately.  Our first reaction is to have negative feelings toward the employee – that the employee somehow doesn’t value the organization.  When employees leave, never say “they were not that good anyway”  or “it was time for them to go”  or “we will be better off.”  This shows a lack of respect for employees that will cause current employees to say, “I wonder what they say about me.”

As you build your brand, you want to be known as an organization that people want to interact with and that treat people with respect.  You want ex-employees that think highly of the organization.  Employees that leave may come back in the future.  Strive for the reputation that your organization is one that employees want to work for and how you treat individuals when they leave is an important representation of that.

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