Being forced to stay silent about resignation

joela

I saw this mentioned on another thread recently and no one answered it so I was hoping someone might answer me please?

I handed in my notice over a week ago and my boss keeps telling me I can't mention it internally or externally in case their big client finds out. Can she force me to do this? I want to be able to talk about leaving and sort out my future plans. It is really stressing me out not to talk openly about it and word has already gotten out anyway as it always does in companies!

Eoin

It's not great practice for them to drag it out (as you said, word usually gets out quickly), but it's not unusual for the employer to control how and when it's announced.

If you're the person that wanted to tell the client your reasons for leaving, my honest opinion is that your employer owns the relationship with the client, not you - I don't really think you have a right to tell them if your employer doesn't want you to - especially if it could jeopardise their future relationship.

seamus

Really it's a piece of private information on both counts. For you, personal private information. For your employer, sensitive operational information.

If either party doesn't want it made public, then that should be respected, within reason. "Reason" being that either party wants to control release of that information. It would be unreasonable of the company to ask you to say nothing at all and quietly walk out on your last day.

In the company's case, they probably want to arrange a handover plan before the client finds out. It sounds much better to be able to say, "We have X & Y who are experienced people, ready to jump in here", rather than, "Well, we're not sure what we're going to do just yet but we'll let you know". We've had suppliers do this and it's far more reassuring to know that there's a plan in place than to just hear that a key contact is leaving and not be told what the plan is to replace them.

I would sit down and ask your boss what the plan is for notifying the client and handing over the work to someone else.

joela

Hi,

Thanks for replies. I don't want to tell the client anything, I just want to be able to openly talk about leaving and to try to source some new work. I also want to tell my team that I'm resigning and begin to handover responsibility.

Eoin

joela wrote: »

Hi,

Thanks for replies. I don't want to tell the client anything, I just want to be able to openly talk about leaving and to try to source some new work. I also want to tell my team that I'm resigning and begin to handover responsibility.

Does sourcing new work require people at your current place to know that you're leaving?

Try and impress upon them that the longer they drag this out, the less handover you can do, and that could cause <problem> to happen. Try and quantify it somehow so they know there's a direct and tangible impact. Some people need it laid out for them like that.