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Submitted by wroschek on
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 Hi all, 

I had my first team member resign yesterday evening. Handled it fairly well. I talked to my boss about it and am organizing for HR. When do I inform the rest of the team? Should I wait for our next group meeting or announce it to everyone sooner (i.e. today)?

Thank you for all and any guidance,

Bill

danny83's picture

 Hi Bill, 

I like to leave the announcement to the next team meeting (assuming you have one weekly). However I make no effort to hide the fact that the person resigned, if people ask I tell them. I try to to treat as a 'business as usual' occurrence. What are other peoples thoughts?

It's good to hear you handled it well, the first time I had a team member resign i wondered if I had done something wrong, and took it personally. Now i am much more comfortable with regular turnover.

-Dan

Solitaire's picture

For me it would depend on the situation, especially regarding the replacement of that person and the impact on the team. I've had someone resign, which has meant I've had to look at the overall workload and the person leaving not being immediately replaced. As this meant extra work for the remaining team, I wanted to be 100% sure of the situation by the time I updated the team. I then held a quick 10 minute meeting separate to the team meeting, when the whole team were there, to announce the person leaving and what we needed to do about their workload.

If your person is being immediately replaced and you know this, then you could announce it at the team meeting or straight away, depending on the size and availability of your team. If your team is widely scattered you could even send an email announcing the leaver and thanking them for their hard work and advising what will happen regarding a replacement.

I think it is important to take on board the feelings of the person leaving, they are likely to want to tell everyone as quickly as possible. And also to bear in mind the feelings of the team that are being left, possibly to cope with more work in the short term. The needs of the many (the team) often out-weigh the needs of the few (the person leaving) so if you need to, you could explain to the leaver that it would be best if they don't tell anyone yet that they are leaving, and ask them to wait to talk about it.

Good luck,

Jane

VPfreedude's picture

Hi Bill,

My thought is if you have to wait more than a day or two grab your team together and tell them in a separate meeting.  Ask the departing person to keep things under wraps until you have told the team.

My reasoning is I have seen the scenario play out many times where the manager waits to tell the team but by the time of the announcement everyone has heard and many have already started speculating and rumor/gossiping about the hows/whys of the situation.  I found it better to get the message out all at one time and people could hear the hows & whys and not get too wrapped up in the event.

Just my 2 cents.

wroschek's picture
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Thank you for your input. I wound up telling the team a few days later before our next scheduled group meeting. I stated directly who resigned, the reasons I was given, and what it meant for the team (workload, replacement, etc.). There was some mumbling after I left and performance has not suffered since.

Thank you again for your insight and assistance, I think it went over as well as it could have given my experience.

Sincerely,

Bill