Don’t quit the job you hate in a blaze of glory
People are quitting their jobs at the highest rates in nearly 20 years, a sign that they are finding and landing other opportunities.
The national quits rate — the percentage of employed workers who quit their jobs in a given month — reached 2.4 percent for three months this summer, the highest level since the start of 2001, before dipping to 2.3 percent in October. The U.S. has 7.1 million job openings, compared with 6 million unemployed people seeking work.
Those odds can make it tempting to throw your computer out the window, flip your boss the bird and slam the door behind you.
But experts advise both employers and employees to handle quitting with care.
“It’s already a traumatic time,” said Tom Alexander, CEO of Holistic, a Chicago company that helps employers analyze workforce and employee experience data. “Everybody really needs to be on their best behavior.”
Sometimes, though, frustrations mount to the point of explosion, resulting in dramatic quitting scenes many people dream they had the guts to pull off. A teen working at a Walmart in Canada recently made headlines for quitting over the store intercom, announcing to shoppers, “Nobody should work here — ever.”
Philip Wizenick had his Ican’t-take-it-anymore moment while tending bar at King Arthur’s Pub in the Loop in the 1980s, where an expense-account crowd gathered for three-martini lunches in the swanky Rolls Royce Room.
Wizenick was helping a waiter fill a large tray with drink orders when a young couple sat at the bar, and he made eye contact to let them know he would be right there. But one of the owner’s sons ran over and started yelling at him to serve the couple, prompting Wizenick to take off his mess jacket and hand it over.
He recalls saying, “You tend bar,” and walking out.
Wizenick, who was able to land another bartending job in the Loop in no time, said he can’t imagine handling it any other way.
“It builds up and builds up because you get a boss that’s on you constantly for no good reason,” said Wizenick, 73, who lives in Streeterville. “You can’t let it slide.”
Alexander, of Holistic, advises both employees and employers to think of quitting not as a permanent end of the relationship, but rather the start of a new phase of the relationship.
“You will cross paths with everyone again,” he said.
That means employees should give at least two weeks’ notice and help with the transfer of work, and employers also should be gracious.
Employers often make the mistake of taking the resignation as a personal affront, and when they get bitter, it harms the culture among the remaining employees, Alexander said. They also reflexively scramble to retain people, which shouldn’t happen when employees are on their way out the door.
Rather, employers eager to keep top performers should proactively seek out and respond to their concerns and ensure they have advancement opportunities, while giving less successful employees honest assessments of their future at the company and supporting their efforts to move on, Alexander said.
Some companies take that culture to the next level.
Chicago-based Jellyvision, which designs benefits enrollment software, has a “graceful leaving” policy that encourages employees to inform the company of their intent to leave long before they have accepted another offer or even started to look. Most employees are encouraged to give two months’ notice, while leaders are asked to give four.
In return for the ample heads-up, which allows the company to plan for a replacement as well as offer opportunities that might entice the employee to stay, the short-timers are supported in their job search, given time off to interview, and treated no differently from their colleagues. They get planned raises and feedback like everyone else.
“It’s kind of like a breakup where you stay friends with your ex,” said Kelly Dean, vice president of people at Jellyvision.
Jellyvision employees are told about the policy on their first day, though as the company has grown, it has become more difficult to convince people that it’s real, Dean said.