Wibu to give my manager a heads up?

[threelegdonkey]

I work in a pretty small team with an even smaller management team.

One of my management colleagues (who I'll call X) recently confided in me that she was looking for another job as she's tried unsuccessfully to renegotiate the terms of her employment and was just generally unhappy in the job. X hasn't been in the role that long but I don't think it quite met her expectations so tbh I think moving on is probably the best thing for her. I like her as a person but she hasn't been the easiest to work with lately as I think her frustration at the role is becoming more and more apparent at she's putting less and less effort in.

X has told me that she's been looking for other jobs and has had interviews and trial shifts already so it seems only a matter of time before she gets something else and gives her notice in, I have a feeling this will be quite soon.

Would I be unreasonable to give my manager a heads up about this? I'd feel bad going behind X's back to mention this to my manager when she hasn't got another job yet and might even change her mind about it. It's her news to tell and I don't want to feel like I'm gossiping.

At the same time myself and my other colleagues are absolutely on our knees because we are so short staffed and we are about to head into our busiest time of year so to lose another member of staff would really impact us all in a huge way. I was close to tears at work earlier as I was so stressed and overwhelmed. Any possible chance to get ahead in the recruitment process would be really helpful.

Would you want to know if you were the manager? Also, if my manager finds out that I knew in advance and didn't say anything they might be really annoyed. I don't know what to do?!

I agree that it's no business of yours to pass on private information about your colleagues intentions. Who knows, they might not find a new role that works better then where would you be?

It's entirely reasonable to give your analysis of the current situation, that colleague appears frustrated with the role and that a disproportionate load is falling on yours and other colleague's shoulders.

Hope it works out for you.

If you told him, what could he do? He can't recruit til she's gone. So I'd say nothing.

However, if she's not doing her job properly which is increasing your workload, I'd report her for that. It's not fair when other people are made ill by having to pick up the slack.

The job market is active in most industries at the moment, but it’s very much in favour of the job seeker, which means they can be picky about where they want to go, package etc. If your company have been advertising for some time with no luck, that suggests the remuneration and benefits package are not in line with the market norm and they therefor aren’t attracting applicants who can go elsewhere for better pay/more flexible working etc.

I totally agree with a PP - all of this smacks of a failure at a senior level; failure to motivate and engage their staff, failure to effectively performance manage individuals and their workloads, failure to adequately resource, failure to benchmark salary & packages vs market/competitors and finally failure to come up with other flexible and innovative solutions to address the issues with recruitment.

I’d take a leaf from X’s book and start looking around yourself!

I think it depends where you work- I'm in a civil service environment where this kind of information is generally shared- and for internal posts there's a strong expectation that the line management will chain will read personal statements and do mock interviews to give people the best chance of getting their new post. Having come from the private sector I do find that a bit weird still, but if its culturally the norm then it's not an issue.

If it's not, and your long term staff resilience is a massive risk, I'd consider trying to keep it vague/anonymous and pass on that you've got concerns about morale in the team and you're concerned it 's getting to a stage where it might lead to people considering their options. This clearly only works if you've got enough people that your colleague isn't immediately identifiable.

The other thing is rhst you've said the manager would want to keep her, but she's clearly already tried to renegotiate and been turned down. That doesn't sound all that promising in terms of what meaningful action the organisation would take if you did explicitly say she's looming elsewhere- the time to be proactive in getting her to stay was before she decided the organisation doesn't value her

Imagine you did...

So then work can't hire someone til she puts in her notice.

She finds out what you did and either puts in her notice and is horrible to work with whilst she works her notice, right in your busiest period.

She walks out - right in your busiest period, leaving you high and dry with even fewer staff members.

She has changed her mind - manages to keep her job - is awful to work with.

She gets sacked, works out her notice - is awful to work with.

She gets sacked, leaves immediately - right in your busiest period, leaving you high and dry with fewer staff members.

I do not see a single way that this works out beneficial for you OR the company or anyone else.

STFU.

It's nobodies business and she clearly was silly for sharing her thoughts with you, you don't have a right to drop her in it because she's considering a different job.