Should I accept the withdrawal of resignation?

JReacher1

goater78 said:

Takeaway_Addict said:

goater78 said:

Undervalued said:

goater78 said:

Undervalued said:

I agree with the majority who say that it would generally be unwise to allow the withdrawal of an employee's resignation.

A compromise would be to re-employ the employee after a break of at least one week. That would break their continuity of employment meaning that their services could easily be terminated if their commitment was in any way lacking.

No employee would accept that. 

Why not?

The employee would be in no worse position than if he started afresh with another company. It would be a gesture of goodwill on his part, as he has no legal right to withdraw his resignation and simply carry on as before unless the company is willing to be that indulgent. It would obviously depend on what other options are open to him.

You say "No employee would accept that". How do you feel able to speak for every employee in the country?

Ok, only a desperate or extremely stupid employee would accept this. 

It’s a nonsense idea.

Given a choice of no work or work most employees would take it

That’s too simplistic a view. Of course if there was a choice of no job or a job people would take the job. However in this situation the employee has been offered another job so he seems to be able to quite easily find alternative employment. 

Ignoring that though the OP works for a large organisation and the suggestion he goes to his HR department and tells them they need to offboard an employee and then onboard the same employee in one weeks time will be such a ridiculous request the company will think he’s got a screw loose. 

The fact you seem to think this is a good way forward would sort of indicate you’ve never really worked in a large organisation.  

Agree 100%. 

There are some very knowledgeable posters on this forum but there are also a small number who lack real world experience of managing people in an large organisation. As a result on occasion you get some erratic advice like has been offered here. 

I strongly recommend the OP doesn’t take this suggestion to their HR department as it will likely raise some concerns over whether they should be in a position to manage people. 

My view is that there isn’t really a definitive answer either way to the OP’s situation it really depends on the employee and nobody here will know if they will stay for years or leave in six months. I do know I have been recruiting for two vacancies in my team for a few weeks now and the quality of candidate applying is poor. Therefore may be easier to just allow them to stay and see what happens in the future. 

On a side note it would interesting to see what an employee tribunal view was on whether deliberately putting a one week break in an employees employment record solely for the purpose of reducing that employees legal rights would be deemed legal.  

Khaderbhai

Good discussion!

I have been in the same position very recently. For me it was a gut feeling no to the employees request, but like OP has suggested, check with HR for a coordinated response. 

If you think longer term, for me I would rather get on with recruiting team members that want to be there and not worry as much about being down on. employee numbers in the short term.

tealady

Personally speaking I would let them go.
Could you speak to the interviewees about a start date of (say) end of April.
That would give them enough time to hand in any current notice.
Your employee wants to leave, go with your gut and let them go. A business is not just one person. Think of the effects on other staff of this tooing and froing.
Best of luck, keep us updated as to how this pans out.

annetheman

Been the employee there!

I handed in my notice by email - then, my manager called me in for a chat as to my reasons, focussed on the low pay reason I gave (seemingly ignored the others), and matched my new job offer's pay. So I formally withdrew my resignation.

Less than 8 months later I left.

It's a 'when' not an 'if' they will resign again.

If you do decide to accept the withdrawal, I would suggest also making sure you really listen to all the reasons they wanted to leave, even the ones that seem vague. Those will be the 'unfixables' that will inevitably cause them to leave again.

TBagpuss

annetheman said:

Been the employee there!

I handed in my notice by email - then, my manager called me in for a chat as to my reasons, focussed on the low pay reason I gave (seemingly ignored the others), and matched my new job offer's pay. So I formally withdrew my resignation.

Less than 8 months later I left.

It's a 'when' not an 'if' they will resign again.

If you do decide to accept the withdrawal, I would suggest also making sure you really listen to all the reasons they wanted to leave, even the ones that seem vague. Those will be the 'unfixables' that will inevitably cause them to leave again.

I think it is very variable, and depends enormously on why they were leaving in the first place.

Where I work, we have one employee who resigned about 10 years ago. Had a chat and talked about why, confirmed we were actually able to address those issues and they retracted their notice and are still with us now.  In that case, the reasons were mostly external and we were able to offer them some adjustments that let them deal with those factors, but we did also make very clear that there was no pressure and of they still felt it was better to go, that we would of course provide the glowing reference they deserved and wish them well.

We've also have people who did leave pretty soon afterwards, and we've also had people who left then contacted us to ask to come back not long afterwards, but I'd agree that if someone has expressed several things they weren't happy with, unless you can resolve all of those issues they aren't likely to stay any longer than it takes for them to realise those things won't change and to find an alternative.  

goater78

I resigned 8 years ago as I wanted more money and they said no.  I then got offered a job on £10k more than I was earning so resigned.  My company matched the offer and as I was happy apart from salary stayed.

Obviously was annoying that the company wouldn't increase my salary initially and I know people like to say that you should resign anyway as it shows that the company doesn't value you.  At the end of the day though rejecting the offer and leaving would have been cutting my own nose off.  Since then I have had several big payrises and have never been happier at work.  So it seemed like the right decision.

robatwork

Bit late to this, and most are saying "let them go". That's also my first reaction. 

However 2 people left my company for the verdant green fields of new employment, and came back within a year. No bridges were burnt, and they have been in the company for another 10 years or more. 

So they felt they needed to leave (and few employees will tell you the truth about why they are jobseeking), but were dedicated when returned. If this person is made of the right stuff then it can be a good move to keep them.