Erratic employee

theoretica

softwareguru said:

He's definitely stopped enjoying his job, unfortunately. Hasn't even tried to hide that.

Did you try to do anything when you first noticed this?

softwareguru said:

He definitely isn't interested in money, I've tried that and it made it worse, along the lines of "if you think I'm worth that, why would you wait until I've resigned" type speech. I

A fair point. Why did you?

nicechap

softwareguru said:

He's definitely stopped enjoying his job, unfortunately. Hasn't even tried to hide that.

Definitely no win on the lottery, and nobody's fed back any rumours or gossip about other life changes, but he seems to live quite modestly, so I imagine he's probably been able to save a good whack from his salary. 

He definitely isn't interested in money, I've tried that and it made it worse, along the lines of "if you think I'm worth that, why would you wait until I've resigned" type speech. In any event, he turned down an increase of over 15% saying it wasn't about the money, and specifically mentioning stress and politics!

I just get the feeling I'm being expected to offer or do something else, but I'm really at a loss. I can't turn the company into Google overnight!! 

softwareguru said:

Edit: I also get a vibe that this employee is doing this purely to make a rather large statement that they'd rather work stacking shelves than here- which will cause immense reputational damage when he tells our clients about his new job or updates Linkedin etc, and will put a massive spotlight on the business. Would anyone really sacrifice their career to make a point?!

softwareguru said:

Hi all, appreciate this is more for employees, rather than employers, but I'm at a bit of a loss with this one.

This is a large business, multiple divisions and business operating units, with no central HR. Each business unit has their own management. 

In my business unit, I have a critical / key employee - i.e. the customers buy in to their genuinely inspirational attitude and knowledge of industry, which keeps money coming through the door for consultancy and product sales. If they leave, the customers will almost certainly stop putting business our way, (£1m p.a.). The relationship is where the value is.

I cannot fault their dedication to the customer, their industry and the revenue this person generates. However, they have absolutely no time for me as a Director and their manager, because I know very little about the industry, and in fairness I request a lot of "boring", fairly complex papers and business cases from this individual, to try to learn more myself. These are done to a high standard, surprisingly high actually. I've now started requesting more of this type of report as it is genuinely helpful for me and the business. However, up until 3 months ago, this wasn't something the business had expected him to do, although it was/is evident in their JD this sort of thing could be required.

They then started raising highly critical, but largely valid points about the company, which admittedly adversely affect everybody here. However this is out of my control and HQ aren't interested in doing anything about what this employee describes as "organisational failings", "weak management", "deceptive business practices" and "poor career progression". These are actually valid points which I've acknowledged and fed back.

However, rather than do something about the issues, our business strategy is to retain key staff by essentially paying them off. This person isn't even 30 yet, and is earning close to £60k plus share options, car and healthcare. Well outside of London, up North. So amazing wage, well above the similar role elsewhere. They've not asked for more money, and are generously rewarded annually with a bonus. They've even written in their appraisal they feel overpaid!! I believe they receive a fair wage that's right for them.

Fast forward to today. Resignation letter by email. 3 months notice. No explanation, just very concise and states they are resigning. OK...
Enquiries with employee reveals they have accepted a job in a local supermarket, essentially shelf stacking on £8-9/hour. Tells me they've had enough of internal politics and the stress, and just wants a simple life. (Bear in mind, Under 30!).

If this person leaves, it will take months, if not longer to find a replacement in this specialist industry, and the loss of customers will ruin this business unit when the current projects end. 

Can someone share some light on what might make this employee reconsider? Why would you walk away from a very well paid job, at a young age, with amazing knowledge and throw it away for an supermarket entry level job? Is this some sort of Gen Z or whatever statement? 

Sounds like your employee has made a rationale decision.  Your language is quite revealing, you don't see them as a person, more as something you own, or a pet who needs toilet training to 'behave' properly according to your personal values.  There is clearly a huge chasm between you, especially if you don't know what rewards are of valence to them.

There are plenty of threads on here from people who find their job 'unhealthy' and for the sake of their mental health are advised to leave.

He may well know his value and have found a new employer - the supermarket may or may not be true.

What's your organisation's view on sabbatical? Would it be better for them and you to have the possibility of them coming back afterwards?  Have you tried promoting them? or exposing him to something new like strategy development with guaranteed dedicated time to work on it with that team? Or praising him to your bosses?
 
Lack of money is a demotivator, excess money rarely motivates for long - look at premiership footballers.

JReacher1

By the sounds of it the internal politics are the fact you’ve asked him to do extra work and when he has raised issues with the company that need to be improved you haven’t been able to resolve them. 

At the end of the day nobody is indispensable and although it may be difficult for a short period of time you can’t have the business reliant so much on just one key resource. You want to spend the next three months of his notice period getting them to hand over as much knowledge as they can to mitigate the impact of this. 

The shelf stacking thing is nonsense no supermarket will offer a shelf stacking job to someone and then wait three months for someone to serve their notice in a highly paid role. As a side if he doesn’t like internal politics at your place (where you appear to leave him alone a lot of the time) then he’s not going to like being managed in a supermarket!

He’s got another plan and doesn’t want to tell you what it is so is spreading the shelf stacking story. Is there any chance he can set up a rival company and steal these customers?

ratechaser

I think some of these comments have been a bit harsh OP. This to me sounds like a case of a petulant spoilt child that has been over indulged in his career, and is rebelling now he is being asked to do something that he doesn't see as important. Well tough titty, grow up and realise that with the corporate dollar comes a bit of doing what your employer tells you, even if you don't agree. Perhaps he'll get free rein to express himself while stacking shelves, but somehow I doubt it. 

Maybe he's watched American Beauty one too many times...

Of course the irony is that I'm finally getting tired of that same corporate BS myself and am *this* far away from telling them to stick it and walk off into the sunset to do something more fun. But I do have the benefit of quite a few more years and significantly more assets behind me. Which I built up over the years fully appreciating the nature of corporate working life. So of course I'll be far more professional when I throw in the towel. By which I mean I'll wait for them to give me a nice package to walk away 

TELLIT01

Obviously not great news for the OP, but I actually admire the person who is leaving.  I suspect they have been tucking away large part of the massive salary they have been earning, until they have enough behind them to be able to walk away from a company they clearly don't want to be at.  Maybe they have inherited money which make the decision possible.

Even if the OP can persuade them to stay, it will only be a matter of time before the notice letter metaphorically drops on the desk again.  If the person is as good as they seem to be, they will have no problem finding another job - if that is what they want to do.

The individual may well have made the decision that they don't need the hassle which came with the current job, and they can live happily on a lower paid, lower stress job.

sharpe106

As others have I doubt very much they are going to stack shelves. Unless the shop is only looking for temporary cover no shop is going to employ someone that was previously on 60k just to stack selves as it is obvious they will not stay long. Most likely they are planning on setting up by themselves.  But still can't hurt asking what it will take to keep them. 

Comms69

softwareguru said:

Hi all, appreciate this is more for employees, rather than employers, but I'm at a bit of a loss with this one.

This is a large business, multiple divisions and business operating units, with no central HR. Each business unit has their own management. 

In my business unit, I have a critical / key employee - i.e. the customers buy in to their genuinely inspirational attitude and knowledge of industry, which keeps money coming through the door for consultancy and product sales. If they leave, the customers will almost certainly stop putting business our way, (£1m p.a.). The relationship is where the value is.

I cannot fault their dedication to the customer, their industry and the revenue this person generates. However, they have absolutely no time for me as a Director and their manager, because I know very little about the industry, and in fairness I request a lot of "boring", fairly complex papers and business cases from this individual, to try to learn more myself. These are done to a high standard, surprisingly high actually. I've now started requesting more of this type of report as it is genuinely helpful for me and the business. However, up until 3 months ago, this wasn't something the business had expected him to do, although it was/is evident in their JD this sort of thing could be required.

They then started raising highly critical, but largely valid points about the company, which admittedly adversely affect everybody here. However this is out of my control and HQ aren't interested in doing anything about what this employee describes as "organisational failings", "weak management", "deceptive business practices" and "poor career progression". These are actually valid points which I've acknowledged and fed back.

However, rather than do something about the issues, our business strategy is to retain key staff by essentially paying them off. This person isn't even 30 yet, and is earning close to £60k plus share options, car and healthcare. Well outside of London, up North. So amazing wage, well above the similar role elsewhere. They've not asked for more money, and are generously rewarded annually with a bonus. They've even written in their appraisal they feel overpaid!! I believe they receive a fair wage that's right for them.

Fast forward to today. Resignation letter by email. 3 months notice. No explanation, just very concise and states they are resigning. OK...
Enquiries with employee reveals they have accepted a job in a local supermarket, essentially shelf stacking on £8-9/hour. Tells me they've had enough of internal politics and the stress, and just wants a simple life. (Bear in mind, Under 30!).

If this person leaves, it will take months, if not longer to find a replacement in this specialist industry, and the loss of customers will ruin this business unit when the current projects end. 

Can someone share some light on what might make this employee reconsider? Why would you walk away from a very well paid job, at a young age, with amazing knowledge and throw it away for an supermarket entry level job? Is this some sort of Gen Z or whatever statement? 

I think your underplaying things. They've been vocal about what the issues are and nothing has been done to address it. Which frankly is your job. 

Money isnt the driving factor is worklife is not enjoyable. 

Grumpy_chap

softwareguru said:

This is a large business, multiple divisions and business operating units, with no central HR. 

In my business unit, I have a critical / key employee - i.e. the customers buy in to their genuinely inspirational attitude and knowledge of industry, which keeps money coming through the door for consultancy and product sales. If they leave, the customers will almost certainly stop putting business our way, (£1m p.a.). The relationship is where the value is.

However, they have absolutely no time for me as a Director and their manager, because I know very little about the industry, and in fairness I request a lot of "boring", fairly complex papers and business cases from this individual, to try to learn more myself. 

HQ aren't interested in doing anything about what this employee describes as "organisational failings", "weak management", "deceptive business practices" and "poor career progression". 

If this person leaves, it will take months, if not longer to find a replacement in this specialist industry, and the loss of customers will ruin this business unit when the current projects end. 

Can someone share some light on what might make this employee reconsider? Why would you walk away from a very well paid job, at a young age, with amazing knowledge and throw it away for an supermarket entry level job? 

A large business without HR seems unusual.

It is pretty clear, this is a case of "you go, or I go" - this individual is not going to work for YOU (as an individual) and you have acknowledged your role as a manager but no technical knowledge and that is what generates the business.  Why are you wasting the employee's time doing "boring" reports and business cases?  That is the manager's job so no doubt the individual feels not only did he not get your job, but they are having to do your job anyway as well as their own job.

There may be an option to retain the individual in the business so long as they have a new line manager.  OR, you resign to let the individual step up to your job.  As you said, if the individual leaves it will ruin the business unit, does you job remain secure any way?  It is your failing as the manager to have a business unit so dependent on one individual.

KiKi

Employee doesn't seem erratic at all, to me.  Great career so far, but he's obviously completely fed up with the internal politics.  Doesn't want to play that game - and the company's not interested in solving the issues.  Why on earth would he stay?

I have a very well paid job in a role I enjoy.  I don't necessarily love it - it's not my life's calling, but it's a job I like.  It's a job I also happen to have specialist expertise in, and I know I'm not easily replaced in terms of what I bring as I have a quite specific skills mix which is unusual.  I know my company would offer me more if I wanted to leave.  However, about three years ago I wrote my resignation letter.  Not because of the money or the employer, but because of internal politics, where the directors were not interested, IMO, in solving some very critical issues.  Those issues impacted me.  They made my life really tough.  It was hard to get work done, it was hard to get anyone to listen, it was hard when another department was developing the thing that I'm an expert in, with no interest in listening to clients or people in the business before developing it.  Why would I want to stay in an environment where that's not respected?  It was all about politics, and systemic failings in decision making.  The only reason I stayed was because one of the directors promised me it would change - and it did.  They then realised that the project I was an expert in had barely been progressed, and I was asked to deliver it, and worked my life away for the next year to fix all the issues.  I still resent that, to some degree.  But they did fix the problems, and that made all the difference.  I wouldn't have stayed.  I would have resigned, with no job to go to.   I would happily have worked in a supermarket until I could find another job.

My point: organisation culture and the 'systems' of the organisation have a massive impact on employees.  If you have no central HR or CoE that does OD / culture type work, then it usually comes down to the senior leadership team / directors / CEO, who are doing 'their' thing, but with little understanding of the organisation and the business.  If work is 'hard' because all the things in the system - the culture, the leadership, the processes, the policies, the approaches, the ways of working, the people, the org design - are not aligned, then you can't fix it by throwing more money at it.  Lots of organisations try to fix systemic issues by re-structuring.  It's the worst thing you can do.  The structure is rarely the problem.  If your leadership team are not prepared to face up to those systemic issues there's little you can do.  He's made it clear that he doesn't want to be there.  Either use that to address your senior colleagues to fix the system, or live with it.

gettingtheresometime

Cynic in me says he's going to a competitor & is using the excuse of a supermarket to cover his tracks