Why the End Matters as Much as the Start
Think about how much time, energy and money your business invests in hiring. The job adverts. The interviews. The onboarding. The welcome messages and first-day introductions.
Now think about how much attention goes into handling employee exits. When someone leaves. When a contract ends. When you have to deliver news that nobody wants to hear.
For most businesses, the answer is: far less.
Workforce changes are a normal part of business. Contracts come to an end. Restructures happen. Needs evolve. None of that is unusual or inherently wrong.
But here is a question worth asking: does how you handle these moments matter as much as the decision itself? Does ending employment relationships with care and dignity make a difference to your business, your culture and your reputation?
A recent story in professional football has brought this conversation back into focus. A club informed long-serving staff that their contracts would not be renewed. The method? Email. The timing? Two weeks before the new season. The response? The club acknowledged it should have been handled better.
This is not a piece about that club. But it is a piece about what that story reveals. Because this is not a football problem. It is a workplace problem. And it happens more often than anyone likes to admit.
Why Employee Offboarding Gets Overlooked
Why does the exit receive so much less attention than the entrance?
Part of it is practical. By the time you are ending a relationship, you are often under pressure. There are deadlines. There are legal considerations. There is a desire to move forward and focus on what comes next.
Part of it is emotional. These conversations are uncomfortable. Letting employees go is hard. And when something is hard, the temptation is to do it quickly and move on.
But speed and care are not mutually exclusive. And yet, in practice, one often wins out over the other.
If you have ever been on the receiving end of a poorly handled exit, you know how it feels. The abruptness. The lack of explanation. The sense that years of contribution have been reduced to a few lines in an email or a five-minute conversation.
It stays with you.
Who Else Is Watching When Someone Leaves?
Here is something organisations often forget: when you exit someone, you are not just communicating with that person.
You are communicating with everyone who remains.
The team members who worked alongside them. The managers who hired them. The colleagues who are now wondering what this means for their own position.
People notice how their colleagues are treated on the way out. They notice the tone. They notice the method. They notice whether the organisation showed respect or simply ticked a box.
And what they notice shapes how they feel about their own place in that organisation. It shapes employee experience for those who stay, not just those who leave.
Beyond the internal audience, there is the external one. Former employees talk. They post on LinkedIn. They leave reviews on Glassdoor. They answer honestly when friends ask what it was like to work there.
Reputation travels. Faster than ever. And a single poorly handled exit can undo years of careful employer branding.
Getting Exit Communication Right
So how should these conversations happen?
There is no universal answer. Context matters. But it is worth thinking about the options and what each one signals when you are communicating redundancy or the end of a contract.
Email is efficient. It creates a paper trail. It allows the recipient to process the news privately. But it can also feel cold. Impersonal. Like the organisation could not be bothered to pick up the phone.
A phone call adds a human voice. It allows for questions. It shows that someone was willing to have the conversation directly. But it can also catch people off guard, with no time to prepare.
Face-to-face or video often feels most respectful for significant news. It demonstrates that the organisation takes the moment seriously. But it is not always possible, especially with remote or distributed teams.
There is no perfect method. But there is a question worth asking: what would you want if you were on the other side of this conversation?
And then there is timing. Does it matter when you deliver difficult news? Almost certainly. Telling someone their contract is ending two weeks before a major milestone or event carries a different weight than telling them with adequate notice and time to adjust.
Timing does not change the outcome. But it can change how the outcome feels.
Legal Obligations and Human Considerations
Every country has its own rules around ending employment relationships. Notice periods. Severance requirements. Consultation processes. These exist for good reason, and compliance is non-negotiable.
But legal compliance is the floor. It is not the ceiling.
You can follow every rule, meet every requirement, and still leave someone feeling discarded. Because the law tells you what you must do. It does not tell you how to handle employee exits with dignity.
The gap between legal minimum and genuine respect is where organisations reveal their true character.
Some organisations treat the legal requirement as the target. Others treat it as the starting point and ask: what more can we do to handle this well?
Neither approach breaks any rules. But they leave very different impressions.
Does Length of Service Change How You Should Handle an Exit?
This is a question without an easy answer.
Legally, tenure often affects notice periods and severance calculations. The longer someone has been with you, the more you may owe them in practical terms.
But what about beyond the legal requirements? Does someone who has given a decade of service deserve a different approach than someone who has been there six months?
There is no right answer here. Reasonable people will disagree.
But it is worth considering whether the manner of exit should reflect the length of contribution. Not because the law requires it, but because it might be the decent thing to do.
A long-serving employee has given years of their working life to your organisation. They have shown up through good times and difficult ones. They have adapted to changes in leadership, strategy and culture.
Does that history warrant a conversation rather than an email? Does it warrant more notice, more explanation, more care?
That is a question each organisation has to answer for itself.
What Does Handling Employee Exits Well Actually Look Like?
This is where it gets complicated. Because there is no template for respectful employee offboarding.
What feels respectful to one person might feel patronising to another. What one employee wants is a quick, clean break. Another wants a long conversation and detailed explanation.
So rather than prescribing a single approach, perhaps the better question is: have you thought about it at all?
Many businesses have detailed processes for hiring. Interview guides. Onboarding checklists. Welcome packs. First-week schedules.
How many have given the same level of thought to how they handle endings?
If you were to describe your organisation’s approach to letting employees go, what would you say? Is there a consistent standard? Is there training for managers on how to have these conversations? Is there any reflection afterwards on whether it was handled well?
Or does it vary wildly depending on who is involved, how busy everyone is, and how uncomfortable the situation feels?
When Values Meet Reality
Most organisations have values. Words on the wall. Statements on the website. Commitments to respect, integrity, fairness, people-first thinking.
Those values are easy to uphold when things are going well. When you are hiring, growing, celebrating.
The real test comes when things are difficult. When you have to deliver bad news. When you have to end employment relationships. When the easy option is to send a quick email and move on.
That is when values either mean something or they do not.
If your values include treating people with respect, does that extend to how you treat people on their way out? If you say people are your greatest asset, does that still apply when you are letting them go?
The gap between stated values and actual behaviour is where trust lives. Or dies.
Something to Consider
The end of an employment relationship is still part of the relationship.
How it is handled leaves a lasting impression. On the individual who is leaving. On the team members who remain. On the reputation that follows your organisation into every future hiring conversation.
None of this means difficult decisions should not be made. They should. Businesses evolve. Needs change. Not every relationship is meant to last forever.
But there is always a choice in how those decisions are communicated. There is always a choice in the method, the timing, the tone, and the humanity you bring to handling employee exits.
If someone described how your organisation handles exits, what would they say?
And would you be proud of the answer?
If this has prompted any reflection on how your organisation approaches these moments, it might be worth a conversation.
