How to handle people confiding in you as you're leaving

Question

I’ve recently handed in my resignation.

The reasons were varied, and mostly related to myself and my personal preferences, as well as another job offering that was much better than my current job. With time I’ve gotten a better grasp on what I want to do with my life, and part of it was changing jobs.

As the news of my departure spread, people have confided in me with a whole slew of problems, as well as disclosing some of their plans for the future.

I’d like to somehow warn my employer that there are some common grievances among my colleagues that he’d best address. However, I’ve already had my exit interview and I don’t want to breach the trust of my colleagues.

How could I go about this without breaching my colleagues’ trust?

The annoyances included

• longer commutes than originally promised (the company is a consultancy firm which sends people offsite; the assignments have been steadily moving towards the country’s capital, which is a 100km commute for some, whereas they used to be local: people are complaining that our employer is taking more lucrative, further away assignments, and not compensating the people who have to give up more of their time as the commutes increased),
• assignments that people don’t enjoy,
• people disagreeing with the home-working policy.

It mostly came down to people complaining that they’re having to put in a lot more time than they anticipated, and aren’t compensated for it.

I shared some of these grievances, but they weren’t the primary reason for my leaving and I didn’t elaborate on them much during my exit interview. However, many of my colleagues seem to have a harder time with these issues, and I'd like to make my employer more thoroughly aware of this.

UPDATE

At the recommendation of people here, I have not gone to management, however I did feel like I had to do something to help. So I advised people who confided in me to step to management themselves.

Management has reviewed their home-working policies giving people with long commutes a day tele-work, and given some raises to people who are looking at longer commutes than they had anticipated.
Apparently all it needed was a few more voices to convince our boss that the problems were farther along than they thought, and at least one person who was on the verge of leaving is now going to stay (knowing you're being listened to will work wonders).

Answer 1

Your colleagues don't necessarily want you to do anything.

Many times it simply feels good to share gripes with someone who is sympathetic and in these situations the listener is not expected to actually do anything about it.

You might feel you're doing them a favor by bringing their concerns to management, but really that's what your co-workers should be doing. If you try to raise these grievances with management you may be doing your colleagues a disservice as it is often easy to discern who has which complaints based on context and details.

It is their problem, they just want your ear. They're adults and they can communicate their grievances to their management themselves if they want to. Don't try to do it for them.

If, instead, this is all about your loyalty to management, it still is not good to share what you've been told in confidence. They're likely already aware of at least some of these issues and the word of someone going out the door is never taken seriously anyway. "Exit interviews" have nothing to do with actual improvement of the organization, they're typically HR-created busy-work intended to ferret out potential legal problems and whether or not you're a candidate for re-hire in the future.

In an exit interview you're wasting your time if it consists of anything other than a breezy "moving on to other opportunities" blurb and a "best wishes to everyone".

Answer 2

Don't say anything to the company.What your colleagues told you was confidential and you don't want to breach that confidentiality.

Yes, you're part of an unhappy trend for your employer but your employer will eventually figure out that trend on their own as more and more people vote with their feet and leave. If your employer doesn't figure it out, then they are clueless and their cluelessness is really no one's problem but theirs.

You have your own mix of reasons for leaving and as you stated, your colleagues' mix of reasons are uniquely their own. You already spoke for yourself. Let each of your colleague speak for themselves without you intervening in any way. You may have a general idea of what's going on but you don't speak for them and they never explicitly asked you to speak for them. Your colleagues are their own best advocates, they know best what makes each of them happy and they each have their own idea as to what they want from management. Let them resolve or not resolve their issues on their own. You are not adding anything helpful by intervening.In fact, you can't add anything helpful because you lack knowledge of the specifics for each individual. Exchange enough contact info with your colleagues to keep in touch and just exit.

Answer 3

I think any of the following would be sensible:

• Do nothing. You were told in confidence, end of.

• Offer to take up the issues with management if the person speaking to you wants you to, but only with their permission. They probably won't be offended by the offer, you aren't proposing to do anything they won't agree to, and they can easily say "good grief no!" and that's the end of it.

• Say, "others have said similar things to me: would you like me to let them know you feel the same way?". Then, if the only problem is that everyone thinks they're suffering alone in silence, then employees can compare notes and decide on what they want to say to management about it (if anything). Again, you're not proposing to do anything they don't want.

I think that the following are not sensible:

• "Trying to help" when you aren't sure of the consequences and won't be around to see them anyway.

• Trying to represent the grievances of someone else who has given you no mandate to do so

• Informing management that their employees are complaining (there's dissent in the ranks! Increase the frequency of beatings!)

• Telling your employer anyone's plans for the future -- this could seriously impact their prospects at this firm. I mean, maybe you feel that although you're about to leave, you haven't left yet, and that you have a strong responsibility to report disloyal workers to the proper authorities. In which case this is the only thing to do, but I don't think that's where you are at all ;-)

Answer 4

Why can't you ask your colleagues if they want you to bring it up? Some people are shy or scared to be the messenger that gets killed.

There's no reason to name names. It can be a general suggestion that you forgot to mention during your exit interview.

This is really going to depend on the nature of the complaint. You don't want the company to think they have some sort of mutiny or just a pack of complainers. Also, I would consider whether or not anyone has a solution. They company could make things worse if they're not careful.

Answer 5

What your colleagues do makes perfect sense: they want you to communicate their issues because you have absolutely nothing to lose. Additionally the management can only listen and not try to persuade you since you are leaving anyway.

My suggestion would be to do nothing but listen and try to offer advice or your opinion. If a company is interested in improving or changing things then it should have feedback loops or a formal structure from which issues can be raised, discussed, and actioned or not. Most companies prefer to stay AS-IS until everybody leaves or competition kills them doing patches in between.

You should concentrate on leaving with good terms in case you need them in the future for references or something like that and not try to assist them. It's their problem now.