Vivek Paranjpe is a Senior HR professional with over 35 years of experience, ranging several leadership positions, in India and abroad. He leads his consulting practice since 2003 and presently works as a Strategic HR Advisor to Reliance Industries, and is also an independent Director on the Board of Motilal Oswal Financial Services Ltd. Prior to this, he was based at Singapore for several years where he was Director HR - Operations at Hewlett Packard for the Asia Pacific Region<
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I am a team lead working in a growing consulting firm. Being a competitive market, we have a lot of people who do leave the organization for other assignments. Our HR process is very strong and like all other organizations, we also follow a one-month notice period when employees resign, which employees are aware of and duly comply with. However, I am constantly embarrassed when many of my ex-employees come back to me after a couple of months requesting my intervention in expediting their full and final settlement. Somehow, HR is just not sensitive to ensuring timely F&F for employees leaving the organization and this is something I have tried to address many times but in vain. Unfortunately, this practice is affecting our employer brand as it has become the talk of the town. How do I explain to HR and the top management to pay attention to the employee exit experience? 

From the question, it is obvious that you are not part of the HR function and it looks like you are not in a position to influence the HR function in the company. Settling people’s dues is clearly an important activity, and that has to be done in a time bound manner within a reasonable time. The concern expressed by you is legitimate.

I suggest since you have raised this issue with your HR department several times, you have no option but to escalate this to the top leadership. This should be done immediately and resolution should be sought. Fixing this issue should not be a problem if the intention to ensure timely settlements exists. Some responsible person in the company has to ensure a right process is evolved and the same is deployed with full rigor. Generally, multiple parties are part of the process, hence right SLAs (Service Level Agreements) and process performance measures will have to be established and tracked.

Justification for timely settlements can be many. You should highlight the needs of legal compliances, need to build the right image for the company and display empathy towards people as ex-employees serve as excellent brand ambassadors. Many ex-employees can join back if they quit with the right feelings about the company, and some can refer good candidates for future needs. Overall, it is always an excellent idea to ensure a dignified and efficient parting.

To sum up

If intentions are right, a well-designed and rigorously deployed process should solve the problem of full and final settlement and you have a good business case for this.

Allow Vivek to clear your career and professional dilemmas by writing to us at ask@peoplematters.in