My buddy Rob just called to let me know about something he read on the web today: The HR wizards at Allstate Insurance released a memo to employees this week describing a new feature on their internal intranet: an automatic self-termination process. The details are described in an internal memo that someone posted on internalmemos.com.
Hearing of such a "feature" on a company's intranet makes me think how refreshing it is that at least one management team has accepted that employees may not want to work themselves to death while waiting for their inevitable pink slips. I have to wonder aloud about whether or not they stopped to ask any questions about what they can do to improve employee moral, or did they go directly to "how can we expedite the process?" While I don't have any answers about the specific situation at Allstate, I think it's interesting that they decided to automate this particular process so that virtually no human interaction is necessary.
Further, I wonder how this automated process will be implemented and used? Will they resist the routine of many companies who try to contain and deny the situation surrounding the resigning employee. If you've seen this practice in action as often as I have, you know the routine: if they don't immediately escort the person from the building, they demand that the departing employee not to disclose reasons or their new employer to other employees. This is immediately followed by a healthy serving of managerial denial. As an employee I've seen situations where employees publicly said that they had given their notice and the managers to whom they report deny it without blinking. As a manager I've been told never to discuss an employee leaving with the rest of my team. I personally think this is the wrong strategy, nothing is gained by denying a problem exists.
I hope that the information collected by Allstate's new process will be used to communicate an employee's decision to more than just the person's immediate manager and the HR manager, who are typically the ones who initiate the containment and denial mechanisms. I hope that the HR manager has the authority to use what the employee says in the exit interview as constructive feedback to improve the organization. In the four companies in which I've been a manager, I have rarely been told the details of a former employee's exit interview, let alone seen a written version of the interview transcript.
One other item to consider is that according to the memo, upon submitting the self-termination form, the employee's notice is automatically forwarded to the appropriate managers and local HR managers. An e-mail is generated with the appropriate info for final pay, exit paperwork, etcetera. The interesting thing about this statement is that in nearly every company I've worked at, the moment you submit your resignation letter, the corporate IT team will immediately lock down an employee's PC and suspend e-mail privileges to prevent malicious acts. It would be interesting to know if the Allstate self-termination request requires a personal e-mail address so they can send you the critical information after they've locked you out of their network?
What do you think?
