Your team just changed shape. Talk to the ones who didn't leave…
Two people have gone. One resigned in June and worked their notice, a proper leaving do and a card that did the rounds. The other went in the summer restructure and got neither. Their post no longer exists. Different ways out, same result for everyone else: the people are gone but the work is not.
That work has been shared out between the people who stayed, usually in the first week, informally, absorbed into your current role, and often never mentioned again. Meanwhile the new starter arrives, and the calendar fills up with induction related appointments.
Most organisations jump on expecting people to carry on as normal. But there is a new normal and that needs to be acknowledged, openly. A changed team is a normal recurring condition of working in organisations, but having those conversations with both the manager and the team, in those first few weeks after a major period of churn, is best practice for everyone who stayed on.
In this blog I'm going to talk you through how to have honest and open discussions about what's changed and the impact of those changes. I'm also going to show you what happens if you don't have those conversations early on.
Where September attention goes, and where it does not
Everything designed for September points at arrivals. Induction plans. Buddy schemes. First-week checklists. All reasonable. All aimed at people who are not yet doing the job. Nothing is aimed at the people carrying the extra load. And they are the ones the team is currently running on.
What it does to the people who stay
It’s not only the workload. When people go, everyone else weighs up their own position, privately, and that question is based on what happens next. If what happens next is silence plus more work, the answer has a habit of forming on its own.
The reason someone left changes what the people who stayed are weighing, and a manager needs to know which one they're dealing with. When someone resigns, the people left behind are working out whether to follow. Someone they respected looked at this place and chose to leave. And when a team has been restructured, they're working out whether they're safe: whether this is finished, and whether they’re going to lose their job in the next round.
Both situations look the same from the outside, but the response needed is very different. The first person needs a reason to stay. The second needs straight information about what is settled and what isn't, including an honest "I don't know yet" where that's the truth. Either way, people need somewhere to say what they're actually thinking, rather than working it out alone at their desk. That's what the fortnight below is for.
The two week window
In the first fortnight after the changes take effect, sit down separately with each person who stayed. Not a team meeting. Not folded into a one-to-one about workload. Fifteen minutes each, and ask:
What has landed on you that wasn't on your plate in July?
Most managers guess this wrong. The redistribution that happens informally, in the gaps and is rarely the one on the plan. And ask them to be honest. No-one benefits if the additional pressure is downplayed or underestimated.
What are you covering that nobody has noticed?
People absorb the departed person's unglamorous work silently, and resent it slowly.
What has it been like since the changes?
The most useful question, and the one nobody asks. Keep it open like this rather than asking what they thought when someone resigned, because not everyone left by choice. You are finding out whether the person in front of you is settled, or quietly next.
Then do one visible thing within the week in response to what you hear, however small. Take one inherited task off someone. Acknowledge, publicly what a person has picked up. The conversation on its own, with nothing following it, teaches people that being asked means nothing.
And keep doing it. One conversation buys you a fortnight of goodwill at most. What rebuilds confidence in a manager after a team has changed shape is the same thing that rebuilds it anywhere else: saying what you're going to do and then doing it, consistently, not just in the week the desks were still empty.
Once the immediate load is sorted, give the team something to aim at. Not a pep talk, a plain answer to "what are we actually doing now, with who's left." Where you can, build it with them rather than for them; people are more engaged and committed to a plan they had a hand in than one that was handed down to them.
What this asks of the organisation
Your managers are being asked to hold a changed team together in the same weeks they're inducting new people, and most of them have never been shown how to do both simultaneously. If you're going to put support anywhere in the year, September is a better bet than January, when the cost of leaving it has already been paid.
That support has to include the managers themselves, not just instructions for them to pass down. Managing a team through this while also running induction is two jobs at once, and most managers are doing it on instinct because nobody has ever talked them through it. If you want them visible and consistent with their teams, back them with the same; proper time set aside, not just an email telling them to have the conversations.
People who are unhappy in September don't usually resign in September. They wait, they reflect, decide over Christmas, and then hand in their notice in the first fortnight back.
Start with the ones who stayed
The new starters will be fine. They have a plan, a buddy, and everyone's attention. The people who stayed have none of those things, and they are the reason the team is still standing.
So start there.
If September has changed the shape of your teams and your managers are handling it on instinct, that's worth looking at now rather than in January, when more notice periods kick in. I'm happy to talk through what your managers need at this point in the year and if the honest answer is that they're coping fine, I'll say so. You can email me at amanda@amandaowenmeehan.com