At some point in your career, you may decide to resign from a role that you have been occupying. There is no right or wrong in doing so but leaving an organisation should be done gracefully if you are to be respected afterwards.
Sometimes, you may find that you want to quit your job because you have become frustrated with certain aspects of it or due to personal reasons. While these are certainly valid reasons to quit a position, it might benefit you to take some time to first think about why you wish to quit.
It is important to be certain you wish to quit before you start the resignation process, so that you are doing what is best for your career. A personal conflict, commitment, or change. Now more than ever, our personal and work lives are intertwined.
If your personal life has impacted your work life, you may consider a change. This might be especially true if your current workplace isn’t accommodating and cannot accommodate due to practical issues or policy and cultural compliance.
Employers sometimes like to explore your reasons for leaving in more detail or offer options for your current position to prevent you from leaving. If you are a significant contributor to the company, it might surprise them to see your letter. But on the contrary, though you think you have been a super performer based on your own assessment, employer may think otherwise based on real value delivery.
Your assessment and employer assessment are the same and its positive, then you are actually good. Knowing any gap and that realisation will help you perform in a new job much better.
Over estimation or under estimation of your real performance is a disaster. Such employees who do fail in understanding the real you will fail especially in a new organisation. The tolerance levels of an existing employer and the new employer may vary exposing yourself for a real test.
Transition work
To be resected after your departure, as you transition into your next role, you likely have transition work to complete before you leave. This work often helps an employer close open projects and complete your contribution to the company, so it is important to take it seriously and complete it as soon as possible with all good intentions.
This might include paperwork, transitioning your reports or documents to the right people and completing any open projects. Remember to put effort into your work during your past few weeks – in fact be better than your average performance.
Some employers may end your employment the same day of your declaration if you are going to work for a competitor. This is typically a standard practice, and it helps prevent current employees from sharing any company information or trade secrets with a competitor.
People who join competitors are generally hated and lose respect for all what they have done for the previous organisation which leaves you with a bad taste too. People with the right morale values and ethics will be respected until your last journey to the cemetery.
When you vacate a position, an employer may find a replacement before you finish your tenure. This can allow for an opportunity to train the replacement, which also might be something an employer requires before your resignation.
New blood
But at the same time employer might evaluate the option of not backfilling but re-organise the function to be more efficient to cut fat. It’s important for any organisation to inject new blood regularly capitalising on these opportunities to up the game. People brought from other industries can help an organisation to learn best practices – new processes – new tools and technology. It is important to always express gratitude for any position you are leaving. The company allowed you to work with them and learn and develop skills, so thank them for their time and be polite with negative feedback if any.
You can express gratitude in your resignation letter and in any in-person meetings you might have prior to leaving. You can also thank your colleagues for their teamwork and support. This can help you maintain those crucial professional ties for your network.
You or they might be in a position later to help with career options, so be courteous. Burning bridges serves no purpose for you. It’s important to maintain respect and integrity, especially in this final phase of your employee experience.
One day we will leave our loved ones behind too, so leaving a job is one of the most natural things but do it gracefully which will make everyone happy including you. Good employers can always find good people should they need but an individual’s ability to find a good organisation with the right fit is relatively harder.
But if you are stagnated, your performance is not good enough to make the organisation win, you cannot devote enough time or have personal distractions and unable to do the job right, then leaving is certainly a good option.
