Had an employee give two weeks notice and then the day before his last day, ask if he could take back his resignation notice and stay in his role. Takes guts to ask, but feels like a burned bridge to me. What would you all do if this happened to you?

This is odd. I wonder if he planned to use his other offer as salary leverage and it backfired?

1. Check with HR and get their stance bc that decision might already be made for you

2. Do you like him, as in is he a good performer? Would replacing him in the great resignation insanity be worth it, as in do you feel like you could wait several months for his role to be filled, have the time to dedicate to interviewing new candidates, have the mental energy to onboard a new person etc?

If he’s a good employee and you don’t want to deal with hiring, I would maybe try to understand what made him resign in the first place and what made him want to stay and see what you could make work.

Quitting a job is not a burnt bridge. If you feel offended someone would leave for an opportunity for growth, that says a lot about you as a manager and a lot about the work culture.

I have a colleague who loved her job and didn’t have any thoughts of leaving. One of the big social media companies reached out to her and offered her a role with crazy benefits on day 1 plus 50% increase in salary. She had nothing to lose by going forward with that interview, because either way she would have a good job. Her leaving her current role had nothing to do with happiness and dislike for her co-workers, but going from mid-size in house company to one of the biggest giants in the world plus 50% increase in pay is hard to say no to.

Talk it out with your employee and see what happened. He could have discovered something about the new offer that he found suspicious, or perhaps the role was rescinded for reasons out of his hands. Just because he accepted another job doesn’t mean he’s not happy with the current one.

Why is leaving a job for another a burned bridge? Were they of value? Were they liked? Team players? That’s what matters. Barring some crazy exit, it’s just business. If they have more value staying than finding and training someone new, AND you potentially get added loyalty by taking them back, it could be an easy choice.

How many stories have you seen here of people saying they received an offer that was too good too refuse, but then they know they'll miss the team far too much and don't want to go?

Have a heart. Don't hold it against them.

I forgot to add I worked somewhere this actually happened. Guy got a job out of state and they lost their client a week after he gave notice so he asked to stay. My agency which was small, very close, and pretty toxic, let him go be unemployed. Which, went on for six months and I think because he resigned he wasn’t eligible for unemployment. He was outside of work friends with many of us and it was a scary moment where our agency showed us all what it really was. Several years later they rehired him as the director of his old Dept. Our industry is so strange.

I think if you keep him, it makes you look compassionate vs desperate.

If it were me, I would tell him that he can apply for the open role and he’ll be considered along with other candidates. Then, I’d hire the best candidate. It might be him. But, who knows. This is not to punish him; it’s to make sure the person in that job is the best person available to you. And it would force him to decide if he really wants the job rather than just a safe place to hang out until the next offer.

Did you ask why he changed his mind? There could be positive reasons, even if he was going to freelance and got cold feet, seems innocent enough…If you say no and you haven’t hired someone else yet I’d say you’d look bad here for not letting him stay.

Good talent is hard to come by.

Forgive and move on. Better yet- maybe start an honest conversation with him to see why he wanted to leave in the first place. Communicate to him that you will listen. He obviously wanted to leave, and probably had an offer fall thru (it happens), but still could be a valuable asset to your company. Why do you feel like it’s a burned bridge? Isn’t it better to address 1-2 miscommunications or misalignments with that 1 person, rather than making a job posting, doing another 3-4 rounds of interviews, putting more strain on your creative team until that new person joins, training the new person, bringing that new person up to speed, and starting all over again 3-5 months from now….

Honestly, I think you nailed it already. It took a lot of guts to ask. And that should show you where his attitude lies - regardless of whatever happened. Give him the benefit of the doubt.

If they gave a two weeks notice it's not really a burnt bridge, he was planning on leaving and gave notice professionally. If they quit with no notice I'd consider that a burnt bridge.

Bosses that take people quitting personally are bad bosses. Be a good boss.

We all quit eventually. The turnover is nuts in this industry too. Are all resignations burned bridges?

Thank you OP for reinforcing my policy to never look back.

It sounds easier than replacing him? I would see it as a positive, personally, unless he's likely to attempt to leave again soon.

It's kinda scary how a lot of people are on their high horses just because they're in a position of power. At the end of the day, I think it's better to show compassion than let someone valuable go because you now have a bruised ego. We're allowed to make mistakes and want to rectify them.

Some people want to do what's best for them. We all know the big guy at the top of the agency gives two shits about us so why do we care so much about loyalty

They are gonna bolt as soon as they get another offer. I’d cut the line and find someone who wants to work with you.

In all my time as a director (6 years now) there’s 25% of the staff that I would never rehire. The other 75% I’d have a honest convo about why they wanted to go in the first place and how that has changed, then welcome them back.

Sometimes people have to see the grass isn’t greener.

A similar situation happened to me years ago and to this day am bummed how it went down. I left a company I quite enjoyed for better pay and better commute. A week into the new job the company let me go because they realized they didn’t have the resources to train me. I went back to my old workplace to explain what had happened but it was too late and the bridge was burned. It was really upsetting because I couldn’t get another job right away, I was unemployed for over 6 months with no employment insurance for a crappy situation. A little empathy at the time would have been nice instead of slammed door in my face. Not the same situation, I know, but it was a lesson in burning bridges and hope that OP finds out why they wanted to leave in the first place.

I would ask the reason for leaving in the first place. And the reason for wanting to rescind the resignations.

It will cost the company (and you) more time and money to train someone new to fill this role vs. perhaps being open to upwards feedback and actually listening to your employee, which may shed some light on the situation. Remember, the majority of people don’t leave bad jobs they leave bad managers.

Employment should be mutually beneficial for both parties. I’d love to understand how giving a standard two weeks notice, then having a conversation about changing their mind is burning a bridge?

Sounds like you’re the one burning bridges.

Somebody resigning and giving you two weeks notice really should not be a burnt bridge.