‘Do I Have to Answer Questions From My Company After I Leave?’
Dear Boss,
I am retiring after 35 years with my company. I was fed up after seeing other people with less experience get promoted or hired in above my pay.
I gave them ten weeks’ notice because no one else can really do my job. I do have a co-worker who does similar work part of the time but only for about a third of their work. Plus, while that person has been working with me for the past four years, they have never really taken it seriously and learned everything they should have.
Now that my last day is nearing, my colleagues — mostly co-workers but also my manager — are asking if they can contact me after my last day to ask questions about the projects that I’ve been responsible for up until now. I don’t want them to. I want to leave and make a clean break.
A complicating factor is that I’m friendly with some of these co-workers, both in real life and on social media, which makes me think I’ll have a hard time not answering them. Really, I’d like to block everyone’s numbers after I leave, but that seems so rude.
Any advice on how to handle this? A former co-worker who retired three years ago still gets questions, and I don’t want that!
You don’t need to answer questions from your former company after you leave. That’s what not being employed by them means; they no longer have any claim on your time.
Moreover, you gave them a very generous ten weeks of notice. They’ve had plenty of time to think through what they might need from you and to ask their questions before you leave. If they chose not to take advantage of that time — or of the multiple years that your co-worker has had available to learn from you — that’s on them, not you. It is the case that sometimes questions legitimately don’t come up until after an employee is gone and someone else is taking over their work, but that’s true of nearly any departure, and companies are typically expected to (and generally do) figure it out rather than try to get additional help from a person who’s no longer on their payroll.
That said, while you’re not obligated to help an old employer after you’re gone, it can be an investment in goodwill to answer one or two relatively quick questions if you can. But that means things like “Do you know where the Jones report is filed?” or “Which vendor did you use for the annual mailing?” It definitely does not include things like “Train me in how to do process X” or “Walk me through the whole history with client Y.” And, importantly, it means one or two questions at most, not an endless stream of queries.
It’s also good practice to leave behind documentation of useful info that your company might need after you’re gone: notes on where projects stand, key deadlines coming up, helpful contacts, etc. In addition to being genuinely helpful, doing that will equip you with an easy answer if any former colleagues do contact you; it makes it easy to respond, “Did you check the documentation I left? It should be in there.” That said, don’t go overboard on how much transition material you leave behind. I’ve seen people leave behind 100-page-long guides to their jobs (confession: I left at least one of those myself), only for them to end up completely unread and their investment of time wasted. So keep it streamlined, and stick to what’s vital.
In theory, if you were open to providing more help than that, you could propose a short-term consulting contract in which you’d get paid fairly for your time (keeping in mind that fair pay would be higher than your current hourly rate since, as a contractor, you would be responsible for your own payroll taxes and your compensation would no longer include benefits). But you aren’t interested in doing that, and that’s fine; you’re entitled to make a clean break if you want one. Sometimes in this situation, people suggest proposing an absurdly high hourly rate to make the work worth your while, but I don’t recommend doing that since it can make you look out of touch. If you don’t want to extend your work for them, you’re better off just saying “no.”
Also, since colleagues are already asking whether they can contact you for help after you’ve left, go ahead and tell them now that you won’t be available. If you were leaving for another job rather than retiring, you could cite that: “I’m going to be really busy with my new job and realistically won’t be available, so make sure to ask me anything you want to know before I leave.” In your case, you’re not going to a new job, but you can still use a different version of that language. For example: “I’m going to be pretty busy after I leave and won’t be easy to reach,” or “I don’t expect to be available, so if there’s anything you think you’ll need, make sure to ask me before I leave.”
Once you’re gone, if people do contact you with questions, you can set boundaries: “I don’t have access to that anymore now that I’ve left”; “Sorry, I’m swamped and can’t help”; “I’m not sure off the top of my head — sorry!”; “I can’t keep answering questions now that I’m gone, but try checking the documentation I left.” If this happens more than a few times, start letting the messages sit for at least a few days before you respond so people stop thinking of you as a quick go-to and to increase the chances they’ll solve the problem on their own in the meantime.
If that still doesn’t solve it, consider emailing your old boss to explain you’re being inundated by requests for help that you’re not able to assist with and ask that she tell people to stop. And if that doesn’t work — which is unlikely but possible — feel free to block the worst offenders.
Find even more career advice from Alison Green on her website, Ask a Manager. Got a question for her? Email askaboss@nymag.com (and read our submission terms here).
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