We’ve all the time aimed to chart our personal course at Buffer for a way we strategy conventional enterprise practices, and severance is not any totally different. Just lately, we’ve adjusted our severance coverage to use in additional conditions. We’ve launched the idea of “mutual separations” for the instances when a teammate and their supervisor each really feel that the teammate’s chapter at Buffer has come to an finish. We attempt to be beneficiant to those teammates who’ve spent a portion of their careers and lives with us at Buffer.

On this put up, we’ll element our severance coverage, the idea of mutual separations, and our changes over the past yr.

Buffer’s severance coverage

Involuntary departures are the standard instances for severance. This time period captures any occasion of teammates being let go or laid off. Our common severance coverage for involuntary departures of teammates who’ve been on the crew for a minimum of 90 days is:  

6 weeks of base wage + 2 weeks for every full yr previous the primary yr at Buffer, with a most of 12 weeks whole.

For instance, if somebody had been on the Buffer crew for 3 years, they’d be eligible for six weeks of severance pay, plus 4 further weeks (2 years * 2 weeks every), so they’d obtain ten weeks of severance pay.

Teammates additionally maintain any tools Buffer bought, together with their computer systems.

What are mutual separations?

A couple of years in the past, we started utilizing the idea of “mutual separation.” Mutual separations are totally different from conventional involuntary departures, which occur due to layoffs, a task elimination, or if a teammate is just not performing on the stage wanted for his or her function. In a mutual separation, each the teammate and their supervisor really feel that the function is now not a great match, and the best-case state of affairs is a deliberate, amicable departure.

When that occurs, the teammate and supervisor work collectively and are available to an settlement concerning the timeline for the teammate’s final day. In any other case, the teammate could select to attend till they’ve one other job lined up after which solely give two weeks’ discover (or much less), or the supervisor could select to let the teammate go. In comparison with these options, mutual separations are often simpler on everybody concerned. Mutual separations additionally typically really feel far more human; the transition is extra organized, and the method is much less emotionally taxing, which has many advantages to the remaining crew.

By paying full severance in these instances, we hope to ask and incentivize teammates to really feel snug beginning these conversations about their future with out concern that they are going to miss out on severance if that dialog feels somewhat bit an excessive amount of like a resignation.

With all of this in thoughts, we determined to offer full severance to teammates who go away on account of mutual separation. It seems like the easiest way to honor their time spent constructing Buffer alongside us and to make the transition as simple as attainable for everybody.

How the mutual separation coverage has labored out up to now

Since introducing the idea of mutual separations at Buffer, now we have seen extra departures occurring this manner. For instance, in 2022, 19 % of our departures have been mutual (3 out of 16).

We nonetheless have some people transfer on purely voluntarily, however now we additionally see teammates open up the dialog earlier after they can really feel that they’re now not an excellent match for the function wanted. This feels wholesome to us, and we need to proceed to allow teammates and managers to contemplate this feature when it feels proper.

Not all resignations fall into this class; it’s not an actual science. In the end it’s as much as the supervisor (with help from management and/or the Folks crew) to find out what falls into this class. Typically, we are going to take into account a mutual separation when a teammate has a historical past of fine efficiency, and both a task change is important that takes the function in a course that’s at odds with the teammate’s expertise or pursuits or the teammate’s efficiency is now not assembly the wants of the function and crew.

We hope that this shift to giving severance to people separating from Buffer mutually encourages and permits teammate departures— a tough however pure occasion in an organization’s lifecycle —to be mutual, organized, amicable, and in the end in everybody’s greatest curiosity.

We’d love to listen to what you consider this coverage at Buffer, send us a tweet anytime to share your ideas!