A good friend just resigned from one of the biggest, most important banks in the world, one that is a household name for both good and bad things.
He didn’t leave because he was underpaid. He made seven figures and was living just fine.
He didn’t leave because he hated the commute or the five days a week in the office. He accepted he had signed up for that.
He didn’t leave because of what his job entailed. He loved solving the complicated problems that were regularly sent his way.
He left because the bank’s stated policy around family support and leave was a farce.
He didn’t know this until he had to use the policy.
His mother-in-law had an unexpected medical emergency and looked likely to die. So he did what a human would do and left work.
For the next week, he worked from home to care for his kids while his wife was with her mother. “No problem,” he was told. “Take as much time as you need.”
He kept working from home the second week, blocking out times in the day when he would be with his kids. He worked late into the night. Still, a colleague asked when he was returning to the office.
By the third week, he heard from a manager, “So when are you coming back?” No idea. His mother-in-law was on a ventilator. His wife was with her. His kids needed him. And he was still on all the calls.
When working from home hit the one month mark, the drumbeat grew louder. “We really need you back in the office.”
“Why,” he asked himself. He was doing everything that needed to be done at work. And he was caring for his family. Did it really matter that he wasn’t making the three-hour roundtrip commute to work each day? Did it really matter that he wasn’t sitting next to the people he was talking to on Zoom?
No, no it didn’t.
And now several months later, he’s gone, starting a new job. It will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to replace him. More costly: Over a decade of knowledge just walked out the door.
Why? Because the bank’s stated policy failed in practice. The managers were not trained to implement it. Or their managers hadn’t modeled how to implement it. Or, cynically, the bank thought people would just stay.
At The Company of Dads, we call this The 30/3/30 Rule. When a leader or future leader in the company’s top 30 percent leaves for a 3 percent raise, they’re fed up with the companies’ policies and corporate culture. Now, if someone leaves for a 30 percent raise, there’s not much you can do about that. But 3 percent says they’ve had enough. My friend did not get a 30 percent raise.
What do you do? Forget spending millions on beautifully designed policies. Spend thousands on training your managers better. That’s it. The return with retention will be much greater. But managers can’t manage if they don’t have the right language.
