I once quit a job and gave them 6 weeks notice because I wanted to try and make the handover as painless as possible. My manager said “stop working today. Come in, check your emails, but don’t do any work. Forward and delegate everything that lands in front of you. Let people who reach out to you know you’re leaving and introduce them to whoever is taking over that particular responsibility. We’re going to have to work out how to do things without you. We may as well start today, safe in the knowledge we’ve still got you in the building for the next 6 weeks if we can’t work anything out”.
You can debate the cost effectiveness of the approach, but there was no doubt that by the end of those 6 weeks they were going to be just fine without me.
That's a really interesting approach. Do you think that was too extreme? Like you could've at least done some documentation work in that time perhaps, or that it went well enough that you'd approach it that way again in the future?
There are two parts on this approach. The 1st one is the positive "hey, chillax, transfer knowledge, don't be stressed, etc." The 2nd is security: "this guy cannot be trusted to 'touch' anything, we don't want him to plant a timebomb, we don't want him to mess things up, etc."
It's not 'polite' to bring up the 2nd, but it _is_ there. Imagine me/you/him/her doing something wrong and bringing down Prod for X hours. Then imagine your manager telling the director "oh, and btw he submitted his resignation 2 weeks ago, and in confidence he told me he goes to our ABC competitor". That-Looks-BAD, even if it was the most honest of mistakes and even someone else's fault. Once you 'stop playing', don't touch that jenga tower!!
Sure, but writing documentation doesn't touch the Jenga tower. :)
Happened to me back in 2009 and I couldn't believe it. I got paid for 1 month to sit around, drink coffee, answer questions. Then I moved and got a 30% raise.
This 1 month also helped me refresh all my knowledge, go through my notes, etc. "In teaching I learn, and in learning I teach". Having around 100 people asking me questions from all over the 'region' helped me put things back together, see connecting dots that I missed before, and I left there with a new (better) set of notes about myself and how to do things.