What Happens When the Answer Is No?

In the early 1990s I worked for Motorola Semiconductors in East Kilbride. It was a fantastic organisation, and I credit it with many of the practices I still rely on as a leader and manager – project management, people management and capacity management among them. The learning was exceptional, and most of the leaders I worked with there taught me a great deal.

The offer nobody expected to want

Latterly, every year or two, we ran a voluntary redundancy programme. This was an organisation where 20 and 25 years' service was common and celebrated. People had flexible working, decent pay and great leadership. Why would anyone leave?

But the package was attractive – around a month's pay for every year of service – and for people with long service that was significant.

About seven years in, I applied. My family and I had looked at everything: the mortgage, what I would do next, how we would manage and what the opportunity might be. By the time the decision came, we had already started living a different future.

The process ran in a set order. You received a quote first, then you applied, and then you were told whether you had been accepted or declined.

I was declined.

What happened next

A decline in that process wasn't a simple "no". It challenged your thinking and your family's, because you had all moved in a different direction.

What happened next changed my career. Fionnuala Barrie, a great business leader in HR, arranged for me to go through what we then called outplacement – even though I wasn't leaving. It gave me the space to understand where I was, what I was doing and what I wanted, and it re-engaged me strongly with the business and with HR. I hadn't seen HR as my career, and I was never on the softer side of HR as it was then; I was much more about the business and delivery. That process helped me see where I could add value, and I moved into it.

The process was the wrong way round

I never favoured the order of that programme. People should put their hand up first, then have a proper conversation, and only then receive a quote. A decline is far easier to accept before the dreaming starts. When you run a programme at high volume, getting that order wrong affects a lot of people at once.

Reading Microsoft's offer

So I've read Microsoft's Voluntary Exit Offer, announced on 26 October, with a lot of interest. In her message to employees, Chief People Officer Amy Coleman describes a time-limited, voluntary programme with financial support and career planning resources, open to eligible employees at level 70 and below in participating organisations in Canada, India, the UK and the US. It builds on the Voluntary Retirement Program Microsoft ran earlier this year. Eligible employees were told they would receive an email with a link to their offer details.

The message talks about giving people "more ways… to shape their next chapter", and it is candid that the offer is new and Microsoft will learn from it. What it doesn't say – and I don't know – is whether an application can be declined, or what conversations sit alongside the email.

Around the same time, Amy welcomed 1,600 new hires, writing that every leader Microsoft will need in ten years is starting their career somewhere today. Some of those future leaders are already there – perhaps seven years in, reading that email and doing the sums at the kitchen table.

What I'd want in any voluntary process

• Start with a conversation, not a number. Let people put their hand up and talk through what they're considering before a quote shapes the whole family's thinking.
• Know the work before you open the door. Be clear which work is stopping, which is changing and which must be protected, so a "no" has a reason you can explain.
• Plan for the people you decline. They've already imagined leaving. A career conversation, coaching or development can turn a disappointment into renewed commitment – it did for me.
• Remember the people who stay. Someone has to pick up the work of those who go, and they need a plan too.

Voluntary schemes can be a humane way to change an organisation. But volunteering starts the moment someone begins to imagine leaving, and the process should be designed from that point – not from the point the paperwork arrives.

So, a question for employers: when someone starts thinking about leaving, does your process begin with a conversation, or a number?

Related insight

• Before You Delete the Role, Do You Understand What You Are Deleting?
• The 30% Rehire Problem

Sources

• Microsoft, "Introducing a Voluntary Exit Offer", Amy Coleman, Official Microsoft Blog, 26 October 2026 – https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2026/10/26/introducing-a-voluntary-exit-offer/
• Amy Coleman, LinkedIn post on welcoming 1,600 new Microsoft hires, late October 2026 – https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7519539296740052992/