MHRM 6701 Week 9 Departure Counting Objection Memo Example

Memorandum

To: Vice President of Operations, Allerton Linen Services

From: Director of Human Resources

Date: September 14, 2026

Re: Counting departures in the county-referred hiring pilot

The Objection

You raised an objection at the August review that deserves a written answer. The pilot's business purpose is retention: the plant wants referred hires to stay on the overnight crew. The referred residents' purpose is upward mobility: a steady job that leads to a better one. Those purposes can pull apart. Of the seven referred hires so far, one, after five months, left for a forklift job at a distribution center paying $3 an hour more on days. On the plant's ledger that is a loss. On the social ledger it is exactly what we hoped for. You asked how the pilot should count it.

Count It Twice, on Separate Ledgers

The departure should be recorded on both ledgers, with opposite signs, and the two should never be added together into a single score. The board approved the pilot with two cases, a staffing case and a social case, each with its own measures. Merging them would let a strong result on one hide a weak result on the other.

On the staffing ledger, the departure counts as a loss of a trained overnight operator after five months, compared with the plant's other overnight hires. On the social ledger, it counts as a resident in paid work at a higher wage, which is the outcome the social claim names.

Hom et al. (2017) distinguish between turnover that harms an organization and turnover that may not, depending on who leaves and why. A useful refinement for the pilot is to record the reason for every departure, for referred and other hires alike: left for a better job, left for other reasons, or dismissed. That lets the board see whether referred hires are leaving to advance, which suggests the social case is working, or leaving for the same reasons other overnight hires leave, which suggests the plant has a broader problem.

What the Plant Can Do About Good Departures

Becker (1993) explained why employers hesitate to pay for training whose value travels with the worker: a forklift certification helps the next employer as much as us. The plant cannot stop a referred hire from leaving for a better job, and should not want to try. It can make staying more attractive by offering a path upward inside Allerton. The plant's maintenance department has had two technician openings unfilled since spring. A funded path from overnight operator to maintenance apprentice, open to all overnight operators who meet attendance standards, would give ambitious hires a reason to advance here rather than elsewhere. I will bring a costed proposal to the next review.

What I Recommend

Record every departure on both ledgers, with its reason. Report the staffing and social results separately to the board. Do not count a departure for a better job as a failure of the social case, and do not count it as a success of the staffing case. Begin designing the maintenance path.

What This Does Not Settle

With seven hires, one departure is too few to say anything about patterns. Rogers (2008) notes that a program's theory can be judged only when enough cases have passed through each link. The year-one review will have twelve.

References

Becker, G. S. (1993). Human capital: A theoretical and empirical analysis, with special reference to education (3rd ed.). University of Chicago Press.

Hom, P. W., Lee, T. W., Shaw, J. D., & Hausknecht, J. P. (2017). One hundred years of employee turnover theory and research. Journal of Applied Psychology, 102(3), 530-545. https://doi.org/10.1037/apl0000103

Rogers, P. J. (2008). Using programme theory to evaluate complicated and complex aspects of interventions. Evaluation, 14(1), 29-48. https://doi.org/10.1177/1356389007084674