Purple Ink’s VP of Talent Services, Peggy Hogan, explains why offering outplacement is beneficial for the exiting employee AND your business.

Video Transcript:

This transcript was created using an automated transcription service and may contain errors.

00:04

Outplacement is awesome for several reasons. But severing an employee relationship is really hard. And I hear this from managers and people who have to make that tough decision, whether it’s for, you know, reduction in force, or it’s just not working out for them. So it’s over and over again, the most common thing that a leader tells me that they hate to do in their job is terminating someone.

00:31

So two reasons to offer outplacement. First of all, I believe it’s the right thing to do. So an employee really needs help getting that next job in most cases, especially if it’s not their fault, if it wasn’t a performance issue, maybe it’s a reduction in force or restructuring of some type. Even if they weren’t a star performer, though, they’re often in shock or sometimes they’re angry, and often they get very depressed when they’re terminated. And that termination has such a huge trickle down effect on their families and even, you know, how they view themselves and their own confidence level. So having that assistance, even if it’s just the resume help and a little bit of encouragement, really helps them when they’re feeling very overwhelmed and kind of stuck. And it does give them a little bit of comfort and confidence.

01:29

Second reason, it saves you money and there’s a great ROI on it. The departing employee is going to feel much better and be more likely not to file a lawsuit potentially. They’re also more likely to speak highly of the organization to others. They may even be less angry or possibly even violent toward the company. Companies who offer outplacement have higher net promoter scores and more positive social media, and better reviews actually help with retention and recruiting efforts. And turnover costs are estimated to be between 16 and 20% of an employee’s salary, so that’s a huge savings right there. Lastly, the remaining employees get shaken up when others are terminated, so you’d think that they would just be glad that they were retained, but that’s not the case. This is often a time that your star performers are going to start to look for a more stable company to work for, or maybe a more kind and loving company to work for where they trust the leadership. So if for no other reason, think about retaining your best talent. They see how you’re treating those departing employees.