How to Let Go of the Exceptional Employee Who Wants to Pursue Other Interests

It should help to imagine that the highly resourceful employee or former employee that you/your company might want to acquire or hold on to may have invested quite a bit of effort into preparing themselves education-wise and/or by acquiring skills to qualify for a position of interest outside of your company.

Consider, especially if the exceptional employee or former was bullied or harassed on a token of envy for the very same talent or skill for which you’d like to retain them, that no one, especially not an exceptional worker, deserves to be held captive in a hostile environment.

Consider economic hardships faced by the employee or former during any periods when work is unavailable to them, and if they are not paid during those spans. Or consider that the individual might have minor children, and their safety is compromised if the employee or former is unable to acquire or sustain affordable childcare, and your company makes no such provisions, or the provisions are not available during a particular shift that they work, whereas an opportunity of interest to the employee or former would either make those provisions and/or pay enough so that they could afford to pay for childcare.

If that doesn’t help, consider that if your company and employees and/or former employees are in an employment-at-will state, and no valid/current contractual agreement exists between you, any endeavors to hold the employee against their wishes, i.e. discouraging other companies to which they’ve applied from hiring them, for your benefit, is an actionable violation of their rights...

If you’ve properly treated the employee or former, chances are they’d be willing to maintain a professional relationship with you/your organization and be accepting of any requests for your assistance in solving any tough problems like they do best.  If you haven’t properly treated the employee, let the experience serve as motivation to do better moving forward…