Onboarding BURNOUT ! Why do we do it ?

Middle leaders and cutting Onboarding Burnout

From a recent conversation. Identities have been changed.

Recently, JC, a newly hired administrative assistant at a logistics company stepped into a role that had been held by the same person for over 25 years.

​The previous assistant was well-regarded. She had a wealth of experience, and had been at the company for as long as anyone could remember.

This meant she had developed deep relationships across the company. Many saw her as the one who actually ran the place – you know the sort?!

Finely tuned workflows around her had evolved over a quarter of a century. Her personality was reflected in many of the systems she had tweaked over the years. These fitted her style of work.

Although not obvious to everyone, she wielded a lot of power and things were done ‘her way’. Pretty much every aspect of the job had evolved around her.

Because of this, she worked with hardly any supervision. Here is the problem, the company expected JC to have the same.

JC became overwhelmed by the sheer volume of tasks and knowledge to absorb. Despite his enthusiasm and potential, the lack of structured support and mentorship made the transition difficult.

Afterall, he was trying to learn what had taken 25 years to develop around one person's way of doing things.

He struggled to keep up and eventually decided to leave the role, feeling unsupported.

Two months later, JC found out that the company had taken on two people to fill his position.

JC’s line manager should have picked up on this when being recruited.

You can also legitimately suggest that a middle leader will see the developing scenario more clearly than senior ranks.

Those of us in the middle tend to be closer to everyday developments.

We are in a position to predict a difficult situation and let people above us know about it.

➡️Have you got a well established colleague who could be leaving soon?
➡️What plans succession plans do you have in place?
➡️What are you doing now?

Let your managers know !