So the big moment has come: you are leaving! Whether it was your decision to move on or whether your employer had to let you go, this moment usually marks the beginning of your notice period.

While employees quite often see this as a relaxed downtime before leaving the building for the last time, it is actually a period with high potential for conflict and frustration! Things can go very wrong, with potentially negative implications for your personal as well as the company's future. In this post I will show you the biggest risks, both for employees and companies, and how to avoid them so that you are able to leave (and live) in peace.

An awkward time - always?

Very often a notice period wins a high point on the awkwardness chart. You may have just told your company that you decided to work somewhere else, and no matter what reasons you gave for your departure, it is likely that your employer will not focus very much on your benefits and look at your situation in an empathetic way. Instead, they are likely to feel disappointed, let down or even personally hurt.

And in case it was not you, but your employer who got you to leave, the emotional landscape most likely won't be any more idyllic: feelings can range from sadness and disappointment to anger and desire for vengeance, and especially the latter two are bad news for everyone.

So is a notice period an awkward time at best, and possibly even a war zone? Maybe. It definitely has the potential to quickly become a lose-lose situation for both sides - but it doesn't have to be. And here is why.

The big no-nos - Employee Perspective

There are a number of things employees are known to do once their notice period started, and for me those are the negative top 3:

Gloating - You are off to somewhere supposedly better, but no need to rub it in too much. Your colleagues still want to feel good about their jobs, and management will probably see it as provocation.
Slacking off - Tempting since you feel (and pretty much are) safe, but is it fair on your colleagues? Just because you are leaving does not mean it is ok to simply dump your work on others.
Disloyalty - You think it would be great to let your clients know you are leaving and tell them why they should probably do the same? Nothing can earn you the management's wrath faster than this. And you would deserve it.
At this point I would like to clarify something: I completely understand the motivation behind each one of the actions I just described, and if you are empathetic you can probably also imagine why some employees would feel this way. Therefore I am not saying that those feelings are not justified - I am saying that you should not act on them. Not necessarily because you fear the consequences (you are, after all, quite safe unless you really step over the line), but simply because you still have something to lose, and that is good relationships with your former colleagues.