Recent trend: Employees "ghosting" on their employers
02-07-2019, 01:28 PM
I think this happens in a lot of cases where the person knows they can't or won't get a reference from the company, and there is no severance pay, so what is the point in giving two weeks notice, especially with some companies that kick people out of the building when they do give notice?
One of my customer sites use to do this all the time, fire or lay off people with no warning. People would get called in to HR or the general manager's office without any warning and then told they were out. Usually, as they went into the meeting, their login and email was disabled.
I argued against doing such things since at times it created problems. Some of the examples:
1: One laid off person got all of the notices for incoming cargo container shipments. IT was told to forward that person's emails to someone else, but instead, within 30 minutes of the person being booted out of the building, the on site system administrator gets a message that the person email address was deleted. It took days for corporate IT to restore the email address (email addresses are intertwined with an ERP system) so the site could get arrival notices of cargo containers.
2: Many people were let got with little to no warning, and no severance pay, and no expectation of getting a good reference from anyone on site, so why would anyone let go like this help anyone there?
A number of times people were working on things and the person who took over only had a bunch of computer files and boxes of documents with no idea of what or how things fit together and no one they could ask because of the way the company did the layoff/firing.
3: I was the only person at this site, ever, that 'when my time came', I 'just happened' to call in early in the morning and say I would not be in that day. They called me and wanted to 'talked to me' about 9:30am in the morning, and the company was in some confusion since I was not there for the whole planned routine. (I got the call while on the the way to my friend's business for the day to visit and refused to talk to them.) There was also concern on their part since it looked like things, on my part, were arranged in that I did not have to ever return to the site or talk with any of them there again. I heard through other people there was some concern that I was going to retaliate against them (company was involved with what looked like to me FCPA violations in China and I had been asking questions). I had thought they would have offered a final payment in order to ensure I stayed quiet, but typical corporate that would have meant the people involved would have had to fess up and then others would have something to use against them.
Later, at that site, the entire accounting department fell apart, I was gone, the controller was gone, the staff accountant was gone and a group controller even left because 'he felt he was doing work that was not at his level'. Where before we use to close the books all the time within 5 business days, it now takes them 10 to 15 days. Where before, for over a decade, the site always showed a profit except for two months, now the site loses money almost every month.
I could go on and on about the, what one can describe, as psychotic behavior this company and many companies show their employees, and then the companies act shocked when someone leaves with no notice!
I think the argument is that ghosting needs to happen MORE often to companies to get them to stop treating people so poorly. The current generation of narcissistic managers and executives will only change their behavior once some kind of disaster happens because someone they were making life miserable for leaves and it effects them.
Many companies have a POLICY where if someone gives notice they kicked them right out of the building that day, so you can't have a transition with whoever will be taking over your position, you can't arrange any last day events or small meeting at a restaurant because if the company finds out they will kick you out ahead of time, etc.
The ONLY thing most companies seem to excel at is engaging in psychopathic behavior and rewarding management that engages in such behavior. I also notice that at most organizations the only people that do well and rise to the top today are absolute charlatans where the company is doing worse and worse, but somehow they convince others to promote them and pay them more and more money, and the people are more and more unhappy with their treatment. Anyone that points out problems is discredited as 'disgruntled' and targeted for removal from the company. Even worse, I see people, that go through the same kind of problems, side with management most of the times!
As an example, Case in Point: GE
This company is over 100 years old and has even its own management university/leadership campus that it runs on Long Island, NY every summer. I have even seen posting for positions in other companies, for reasonable high mid level positions, looking for people that took part in such programs, YET in spite of such alleged 'bright lights' in management, the entire company appears to be going bankrupt. To me, it looks like the company only has a few more years left, they spent billions on stock buybacks to keep pushing the stock price higher and higher, but after almost reaching $60/share in 2000, the stock today is at $10 and people STILL keep writing articles on seekingalpha.com about how there is all kinds of value and things are going to turn around!
One thing people do not seem to directly connect, is that if there was the expectation that a good reference could be gotten from the company, or reasonable severance, then people would NOT engage in ghosting a company. People do not ghost a company when there are reasons not to do so, but where many times there is absolutely no reason to give notice, especially if you are going to get a bad reference, then what incentive is there to give any notice? If anything, the incentive is to hurry up and get another job so you do not run into the problem of 'why did you leave your last job'.
In my recent transition period for getting more projects, I can only say that it has been absolutely absurd the things people are being put through to be allowed to do work at a company:
1: Drug tests - No one use to care, except some jobs with security clearances or transport, now more and more companies somehow thinks drug testing everyone is a 'good idea' but seem to have no data or study to show the correlation between drug testing and job performance.
2: Credit Checks - So now people who need a job to pay their bills, and are probably behind if they have been out of work for a while and have their credit ruined, may be not hired. In some states, credit checks are not allowed and again, companies seem to have no data or study to show the correlation between drug testing and job performance.
3: Personality Tests - God I HATE the Myers-Briggs assessment test. I have had a number of places give this to me in the recent transition. As a general rule, things like these tests and assessments seem to run in 5 to 10 year cycles, where they are in vogue for a while, and then companies stop using them as they realize they are spending money for nothing. Jordan Peterson reports that the correlation with things like Myers-Briggs is like .2 or .25, you square that so the test predicts only 4% or 5% of the performance and it only predicts within a certain range of managers. So you have companies spending something like $10 per test to evaluate people, per every test, and it can't even predict anything. And of course, the companies never are allowed to get the ability to score the tests themselves so the companies selling these test have lock on scoring and reporting the results.
4: Hand writing tests - This appears to be out of favor at the moment, but in some past cycle companies would send out a sample of hand writing for an 'analysis'. Of course, I do not think there is ANY correlation between a sample of hand writing and job performance, but companies did it anyways.
5: Microsoft Excel test and Accounting tests - Things appear to be so bad in the work force, that I have been asked several times, prior to coming in to present, to take a short Excel or Accounting test. I have 20 years experience, an IT background plus MBA and MSF degrees, but the companies 'need to make sure' I can use Excel and know if COGS is usually has a credit or debit balance?!?!?!?
I have even had people ask me accounting questions after the end of presentation.
6: Phone Recorded interviews - I refuse to do these. I did one ONCE. A recording asks you a question and then you have minute or so to answer. If they want me to answer a question, get on the phone with me and talk with me!
7: Bringing in endless people - In the past, companies would put out a posting, maybe get a number of responses, filter it down to about 10, then call in three to interview. The best one of the three would be called back for a second interview and if all went well, an offer would be made (or the project go forward).
In the 'current era' I have been part of a group of ten presentations for a project, and the decision making went on so long that I though the project was 'dead'. I got an update after several weeks saying that things were still being evaluated.
In many respects, getting a project or a job, while you need experience and education, is in many ways almost random since companies seem to spend endless time looking at people to do the work in trying to find the 'perfect' person. While this 'may' work for entry level jobs, the people at my level are the results of 10 or 20 years of work plus degrees and certifications. When companies 'can't find anyone to do the work', usually because their criteria is too high or pay offered too low, there simply is not going to be someone coming along for at least several years since it takes time to get to that level of experience plus companies put people through an absurd amount of things before they are allowed to do any work.