When people leave a company, whether voluntarily or involuntarily, it’s important to take this as an opportunity to reflect on how things can be improved.
In Engineering organizations, when something goes wrong, the team often conducts a ‘post mortem’ (hereafter, ‘debrief’). In a debrief, the goal is to understand the root cause(s) of an incident in order to prevent or mitigate the same (or similar) situations from occurring in the future.
The goal of any organization should be to reduce turnover to the greatest extent possible. There will still be reasons for departures that can’t be prevented. But embedding debriefs as part of your culture is a clear way of showing that you are committed to improving and that you care deeply about turnover.
The people ‘in the room’ will differ widely based on your organization. However, you should keep to the smallest group possible in order to reach meaningful conclusions.
When someone leaves (voluntarily or involuntarily), it’s easy for negative thoughts to creep in. Part of building a healthy culture is recognizing that people aren’t always a fit or compatible with the current state. And departures are healthy.
A debrief is an opportunity to move towards the “now what” phase versus being stuck in the “what” or “so what” phases.
Having a skip-level manager present is an opportunity for them to reiterate their faith in that manager (as appropriate) and to demonstrate the values that they want to instill in their organization.
For a successful debrief, make sure that you are taking time to explain the purpose. It can be easy for this to be an anxiety-building meeting (especially for the manager). In your preceding conversations, make sure you’re setting context for the manager.
When you schedule, make sure that your invitation includes context. I recommend linking out to an internal documentation page on what debriefs are (and aren’t).