Why the signals were there, and why they never reached my desk.
Tuesday morning
It's Tuesday morning, 9:30. Joris walks into my office. He's holding a letter.
"Sarah just handed in her resignation."
I stare at him. Sarah. One of our best consultants. Clients ask for her by name. She's been here four years. I saw her in the hallway last week and she seemed fine.
"Didn't we know she was unhappy?"
The honest answer: no. I had no idea.
What I found out afterwards
In the days after Sarah's resignation, I started asking questions. Talking to her manager. Piecing things together.
It turns out Sarah had raised it. Not once. Three times. In three different 1:1s with her manager over the past four months.
"I want more responsibility. I'm doing the same work I did two years ago."
"I feel undervalued. I see colleagues getting promoted who joined after me."
"I'm seriously thinking about what I want. Maybe it's time for a new environment."
Her manager listened each time. He told me he took it seriously. He meant to bring it up with me. He genuinely intended to.
But between each 1:1 and his next meeting, three other things came up. The note disappeared into a notebook. The intention disappeared into the daily noise.
Three signals. Spread across four months. And not a single one reached me.
What I could have done
That's the part that still bothers me.
If I had known after the first conversation, I could have stepped in. Had a chat with Sarah myself. Looked at whether there was a role that fit her ambitions. Flagged it to leadership as a retention risk.
If I had known after the second one, we still would have had time. Two months. Enough to act.
By the time I found out -through a resignation letter- there was nothing left to do but schedule an exit interview and pretend we'd learn from it.
The frustrating thing is: I'm good at my job. I care about our people. I have the experience to spot these situations and act on them early. But I can only work with information I actually have.
And this information? It lived in the head of one manager who was too busy to pass it on.
It's not about blame
It's not that her manager didn't care. He did. It's not that he didn't have the conversation. He had it three times.
The problem is that between his 1:1s and my work, there's a wall. Not a wall anyone built on purpose. Just the absence of a place where the things managers hear can travel to the people who need to know.
I don't need to sit in every 1:1. I don't want to. But I need to know when someone raises a concern for the third time. I need to see when a development request goes unanswered. I need a way to spot the Sarahs before they become exit interviews.
Right now, the only way that information reaches me is if a manager remembers to bring it up. In a busy week, that doesn't happen. In a busy month, it definitely doesn't happen.
The real question now
How many more Sarahs are there right now, in our company, raising something for the second or third time in a 1:1 that I will never hear about?
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