When an employee resigns . . .

Drill them.

Ask questions.

Ask more questions.

You'll be surprised . . .

. . . that you'll eventually get to the bottom of it.

Some more concrete steps.

1) Ask them about their reasons and let them do the talking. Make the environment informal - like an open forum discussion. Remember - you want him/her to be comfortable to enable him/her to pour out his/her feelings.

2) When he/she is done, discuss every issue that she raised. Drill down. (For example, if he/she says that she is not happy anymore. That is vague. Ask him/her more specific questions . . like are you unhappy with your responsibilities? with your pay? with any team member?)

3) Come up with possible solutions to the points that the employee raised.

4) Let the employee think about his/her decision. Give her time to think it over.

An important thing to remember is that not all problems can be solved and you can't always convince an employee to stay or not to resign. The main goal of this discussion to know the real reasons behind an employee's desire to leave. By finding out, both the team leader and the employee, can figure out on how to move forward, on how to improve current practices and how to learn from this experience.

Today's Lesson on Attendance

Monday + incessant downpour = 2 people who called in sick.

The sarcastic/non-trusting part of me, of course, did not believe them. The TL in me urged and forced me to send my well-wishes that they get well.

These two people are really close in exceeding the allowed SLs of the company. And I am torn - do I need to remind them about this? Shouldn't it be that they already know about this? Does reminding means i'm being privy/bordering on the strict and micro-managing? And not reminding means that I don't monitor them?

Well, here are my insights in all of my questions.

1) I have to treat them like adults.

--> meaning I should not always be reminding them about attendance. They are grown-ups, they should know when to use their leaves or not. And I know that they know when to go on leaves (even if they are not actually sick) because they still have leaves that are available.

2) I need to also remind them if they are close to exceeding their limit.

--> in our company, each employee is allowed 15 SLs. I'll be reminding them if they've already reached 10 SLs or they are using their SLs at a really fast pace.

3) Do not show that you don't trust them when they give excuses. Or better yet, TRUST that they are saying the truth. Aargh, this is something which is really difficult to do.

Work with the available resources you can control

There are two very important concepts on that statement: available and controllable.

Because really . . . what is the point of sweating yourself in trying to find solutions beyond your means and control? Believe me, one can only try so much. All efforts beyond that are totally futile.

To have a more concrete example.

Several days ago, I presented a plan to request for an additional regular full time (RFT) under my team for the simple reason that we have an increased workload (I wanted to just straight-forwardly say that we have been working our assess off and we are tired). Anyway, I have all the figures to show it.

I knew it was a long shot to request for an additional team member. We have been under strict budget compliance for over a year already. I also know for a fact that it is much cheaper to pay for OT than to hire a regular employee (complete with all the benefits). But still, I had a ray of hope that we would be heard . . after all, the numbers show it all. The team is undermanned. When my manager and I were discussing and adjusting the figures, the stats show that if each member of my team render 2 hours of OT each day for 6 months, it is actually plausible not to hire an additional team member. My reaction is what the??? Do you expect people to work extra hours for six months and not get tired? Well of course, I said it in a much, much nicer way. I even pointed out about sustainability. Do we have to tire our people?

Bottomline, after that conversation and several more days after, I asked my manager and just pointed that we could not have that additional person. I did not dare ask if the point was even raised or if it was just trashed straightaway by the higher boss.

Anyway, lesson I learned is to work with the available resources. I can not seem to control the approval of the boss. As much as I tried, the decision has been made. So what now are my available resources? well, obviously . . my team.

As such, I will no longer accept any extra projects for my team. We can only work so much.

Also, I'll look into the possibility of having other people from the two other teams in our department (there 3 teams in our department) to help us during our busiest season (especially that I saw their team schedules and they are never full to the brim).

If I can't have it my way, I have to work around with what I have.