Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past few months, you’ve likely run into the term the “Great Resignation”. If you work for a mid to large-sized company, chances are at least a few of your staff have decided to exit stage left and only rarely will these departures not cause some business impacts.
So what should you do if you are managing a project and discover that one or more of your team members will be departing prematurely?
First, allow yourself a little private time to feel the frustration, fear, stress or anger which are normal emotions when we are surprised by unpleasant news. Don’t act on the initial impulse to confront the folks who are leaving or their people managers as you might say something you’ll regret later on.
Take the time to fully understand the specifics including how soon the team members are leaving, how much time they have to spend on knowledge transfer and other transition activities, and whether there is any potential to bring them back on a part-time or contract basis to complete their work on the project.
Assuming the resignations are common knowledge, meet with the remaining members of your team and listen to their fears, uncertainties and doubts. Just as you needed time to work through the initial strong reactions to the news, they will need to do the same. If you are concerned about a domino effect of other team members following in the footsteps of the departing folks, meet with their people managers to determine how best to avoid realizing this risk.
Working with your core team, determine the impacts and options for meeting your project’s objectives. In some cases, your remaining team members might be able to take on the work activities of those departing, albeit with schedule, cost and potentially quality impacts. In other cases you will need to request replacement team members to get the work done.
This is also a good time to review the relative priorities of your project’s constraints so the options you and the team come up with take those into account. It is important to be realistic as there’s a good chance other projects and operational activities have been impacted so having a backup plan (or two) if your desired option isn’t feasible is advisable.
While doing this re-planning, revisit the work assignments to see if there are opportunities to reduce the impact if you were to lose other team members later on in the project as your senior stakeholders likely subscribe to the motto “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me!“.
Finally, do some soul-searching. Was there something which you did or didn’t do which might have prompted the departures? If there is an opportunity to meet with the departing team members, do so, and seek to understand their reasons for leaving.
Losing team members is a common problem on projects. While it is unfortunate, how you handle such issues is a good opportunity for you to demonstrate that you are a professional, disciplined project manager.
(If you liked this article, why not pick up my book Easy in Theory, Difficult in Practice which contains 100 other lessons on project leadership? It’s available on Amazon.com and on Amazon.ca as well as a number of other online book stores)
Easy in theory, difficult in practice 