What is Ex-employee BCS?
by Miki Saxon
It’s well known that what goes up comes down; programmers know that ‘garbage in/garbage out’ always holds true (and applies to more than programming, but that’s another post) and bosses (should) know that at some point current employees become former employees.
While people leave because of layoffs, it’s often by choice; either way it’s bad news and, like all bad news, requires clear communications to avoid repercussions.
However, there’s one repercussion that even the best communications can’t avoid and that’s what I call boss/company stupidity or BCS.
Granted, there’s a lot of BCS floating around the workplace, but this particular BCS ranks in the top three.
It’s the attitude that no matter how great employees are when they leave they are suddenly no good, their time with the company had no value and the resources invested in their growth were wasted.
The traditional way of looking at the “return on investment” on the training and coaching of employees is that it is truncated the moment they walk out of that door.
Which is really, really stupid.
Stupid because both companies and bosses have street reputations and while current employees contribute to them, those who leave have an outsize impact that lives everywhere forever in our social, wired world.
Flickr image credit: library_mistress
