A sudden exodus of employees is causing leadership to panic and suddenly puts me under a microscope with questions like:
- Are you going to leave?
- What can we do to keep you from leaving?
- Do you see yourself here in 1 year?
These are all semi valid questions to ask in the best interest of the company. But I’m curious how this information could be used.
This all got me thinking – at what point could – “no - I don’t see myself in a year” be used as a resignation with a 1 year notice – and then terminated after ~3 months and be ineligible for unemployment since you “technically” resigned.
We're incentivized to lie to our employers. If they ask where we see ourselves in X number of years, any answer rhst doesn't involve that company is a red flag to management, and likely a reason to terminate your employment.
We live in an age where company loyalty and hard work translating into promotions & higher pay aren't real things. This is not the 1970s anymore, despite what many of our geriatric politicians say to the contrary.
These days, the only way to get a promotion or a pay raise is to quit and go work for someone else. Employers don't like to admit it, but that's the hard truth. There is zero incentive to work hard for, or be loyal to, any company.
Employees and employers are always in a war of information. Employers work together with their crony class traitors (like HR) to come up with plans to increase profits and mitigate losses based on what they can glean about employees. They are asking you all these questions as a form of intelligence gathering. Maybe they're trying to get a handle on where they most need to begin recruiting. Maybe they're trying to get a handle on why people are leaving. Maybe they're using the information gathering privilege to intimidate people. Maybe it's something else.
Either way, it's rarely in an employee's interest to provide accurate information like this to an employer. If they were actually worried about people leaving they could just raise salaries and figure out if there are specific working conditions to improve like getting rid of abusive managers or changing work responsibilities. But those aren't the questions they're asking.
The only question is how to avoud questions or lie. Avoiding is best. "I hadn't really thought of that. What is your opinion?" is a good default. Or, "have other people been talking about that?" If they try to force an answer, just lie. You see yourself there in 15 years, whatever.
This may be a sign that they feel weak in their labor market, though. I think this is actually a good time to ask for a raise and promotion. It's also a good time to start looking for other jobs, as a big exodus of people that they're not handling appropriately means everyone's working conditions are probably going to get worse. They seem to be in complete petty tyrant mode.
At my company, we had someone who told us they were planning on moving countries within a year, but hadn't given a firm date to leave. We interpreted it as we weren't given an official notice until they confirmed the date.
Even after they gave a date, we still treated them as a normal employee, but we did tell them we expected that their quality of work wouldn't drop during this period. I don't know how that would work in positions where the policy is to cut off access after someone gives their notice.
