Photo from UnsplashOriginally Posted On: https://www.gigzio.com/news/remote-workers-are-stuck-in-a-quitting-nightmare
James* said that his last day as a public policy officer in May was like sneaking out from a boring party. He says, “You slip away without telling anyone.” “The last thing I did was send an email to my boss raising concerns about the HR process. He never received a response.” After a courier arrived to pick up his laptop from work, he fled his South London flat and headed for the hills. He said that he had been working from his kitchen counter in a 1-bedroom apartment since the outbreak. He is currently working part-time in his new job. He says, “I shut down my computer at 5pm and was driving out of London for 4 weeks by 5:05pm.” “The way that I felt about my house was really negative.”
These two are just a few of the many remote workers in the Great Receipt who quit their jobs recently and found the last day of work less joyful and more depressing. WIRED interviewed workers who quit their jobs after a long career at their companies. They said that their colleagues sent them emojis, blocked their internal messaging systems and they simply realized their time was up when their email and chat functions were shutting down. Others described hiding in their offices, crying at their desks. They all agree that remote working has made it difficult to feel settled about their job. Experts believe there is a risk of bad remote work options becoming mainstream, with nearly four percent of people contemplating quitting their jobs in the wake of the pandemic.
Sandra* was about to finish her last day at a California tech company. She hoped her colleagues would surprise and surprise her with a Zoom call. She says her computer screen went blank at 5 p.m. instead. Sandra claims that remote-only technology has “magnified a hundredfold” the office clique dynamics that existed before the pandemic. It was very obvious when you were not one of those with enough social weight to be credible. She argues that these two elements should not be connected in a tech company. “The sad parting didn’t bring me closure, but it gave me the anger that I needed to make the coffin.
These poor social dynamics are indicative of a larger cultural problem in companies that have adopted remote work but did not adapt their exit process to address it, according to Anthony Klotz (associate professor of management at Mays Business School at Texas A&M University). He believes that companies overlook the opportunity to improve their company’s culture through offboarding. Unceremoniously letting go of a colleague can lead to a variety of problems. It can be very distressing for those remaining employees. They just lost a friend and coworker. Klotz suggests that employees should ask their colleagues what caused them to quit. This could lead to more staff turnover. If a colleague leaves, and no one mentions their departure, it could lead to employees thinking that the company doesn’t care about their workers.
Companies that fail to make the effort to communicate with departing employees or to mark the transition can be at risk of “all kinds of dysfunction,” he warns. Remote working has a singular side effect that is affecting those who are leaving. Remote working can cause the same stress and burnout as when they worked from home during the pandemic. This is due to the blurring of their personal and professional lives. Klotz states that it also blurs the lines of job transitions. “Offboarding is a separate process that should be separated by a period where the employee digests the first chapter and prepares for the next.
It’s not surprising that many people have been suffering from loneliness and burnout while working from home. Matthew*, a Liverpool-based writer, quit his job in June and marked his final day at work by working alone from his home office with his two dogs. My wife was working a shift at the hospital that same day. I can remember feeling so depressed, numb and spending my lunch break curled on the couch with my dogs, motionless.” He claims that the pandemic forced people to substitute meaningful human interactions for virtual ones. “It’s painfully obvious they don’t compare.” “There are no hugs. There is no going to the bar for a drink. No gossiping over a cigarette. Matthew states, “It’s just different.” “But the sadness felt more prolonged than it would otherwise have, and more intense.”
Worse, remote work has made it more common for people to start new jobs sitting at the exact same place they were working.
Paul* did not attend the party. The most bizarre part of his three-year tenure as a London communications consultant was when he returned his old laptop to his former company and received the exact same model of laptop from his new employer just a few days later. He says that he turned it on at home the first day and “basically, logging onto a new Zoom link.” That was my new job. Same chair, same desk. Quite odd.”
Paul said that it was somewhat disorienting to be in the same workplace for his next job for the first few weeks. It felt like there wasn’t a ‘clean break’ between his old job and the new one, which made it more difficult to settle in. Because my brain didn’t have a proper “farewell” moment, I felt that I couldn’t switch off from my old job or my old clients.
This type of situation puts people at risk of moving into new jobs. Jo Owen, author of Smart Work, says that. He says that one of the reasons you were successful in your last job was because you had established trust networks and influence. This allows you to make things happen through other people. Your lifeblood is your informal network within a company. When you move to a new company, all your networks, trust, and influence are gone. It’s not enough to sit behind a computer and build networks.
