Published on: October 20, 2025 at 9:19 am
In a job market being transformed by AI and other technologies, the old notion of employees as “human capital” needs to change, starting with how organizations view employee departures.
Academy of Management Scholar Sekou Bermiss of the University of North Carolina’s Kenan- Flagler Business School said that organizations’ leaders should view employees as strategic partners helping them to achieve objectives.
The first step in shifting one’s mindset: “Getting over the stigma of departure—the stigma of people leaving,” Bermiss said. “The reason I say that is when people leave a company, historically, it was thought to be a negative signal about their experiences at that company.
“Now we have to understand that what individuals want will often not be something that a single company can provide, and people are going to move voluntarily,” he said.
Bermiss said their leaving is often not because they were pushed out or had a bad manager but rather to pursue growth opportunities or higher pay. He suggested that employees who leave on good terms can become advocates for the organization.
“They refer people, they might refer business, they might boomerang back later on, and now you have a great boomerang employee,” Bermiss said. “That’s one way you can think about someone as a strategic partner.”
The second way organizations can think of employees as strategic partners is by “thinking about how you appeal to the incoming generation of workers” who want to know how their role fits in and feel like they’re able to achieve a purpose in the organization.
“This employer-employee relationship is a partnership that every day I need to renegotiate this contract to make sure you still see the purpose from day one,” Bermiss said.
