Overview
This article examines the importance of maintaining professional relationships after changing jobs. It highlights benefits such as future references and support if you return, while outlining practical strategies like connecting on LinkedIn, attending conferences, offering praise, and sharing industry insights. The focus is on sustaining mutually beneficial professional connections.
Introduction
Changing jobs is an exciting process, and you may need to embrace a few new factors. New skills, forging new professional relationships, assuming new responsibilities, and gaining new experiences are all integral to the transition. After your manager has established the elements of a recommendation letter, your transition to a new role may feel more official. However, you may still want to maintain your professional relationships with coworkers after you begin, and there are several ways to do so.
Two Reasons to Maintain Professional Relationships After You Leave
Maintaining professional relationships with coworkers has numerous advantages. Relationships are at the centre of our success at work. Even if you forge new relationships with coworkers, it makes sense to keep in touch with old ones for two critical reasons:
1. A coworker provides excellent references
Whether you’re looking for a referral or feedback on your performance for your next professional endeavours, you can get excellent references from coworkers with whom you have a good professional relationship. Coworkers have the best knowledge of your work ethic and commitment. Hence, it’s undoubtedly worth establishing and maintaining good relationships with them if you require a referral.
2. Coworkers can still support your goals if you rejoin
The unpredictability of career growth can lead to numerous unexpected situations, such as rejoining previous organisations. In circumstances where you must return to your former workplace, maintaining professional relationships with coworkers is crucial. Coworkers don’t have to reforge or improve their relationships if they have remained in contact.
Four Key Ways to Maintain Professional Relationships
Fostering good relationships is, therefore, essential. But how can you maintain these relationships after you change jobs? Let’s consider the four key ways to achieve this.
1. Connect with coworkers on social media
Today, social media sites are one of the most convenient means to maintain professional relationships among workers. LinkedIn is a top recommendation for staying in touch and receiving updates on coworkers’ career advancements. The purpose of LinkedIn is to connect coworkers within an extensive network, enabling them to keep in touch.
2. Attend a professional conference
You can still attend professional conferences and meetups with coworkers, even after they transitioned to a new role. To initiate contact, consider sharing details about the experience and meeting with them to discuss work-related topics or career progression.
Suppose you’re unsure whether a coworker will attend a conference shortly. In that case, you may also check their social media updates, note any conferences they are interested in attending, and reach out to discuss meeting with them there.
3. Offer praise to coworkers
Social media is an excellent way to stay informed about your coworkers’ career progress and to maintain contact through praise. If you notice that they have received a promotion or certification in their field of work, praising them is an excellent way to stay in touch or reconnect with former teammates.
4. Share work-related articles
Come across news or articles related to changes in your industry or new trends related to your colleague’s field of expertise. You may share these work-related articles via email with them, mentioning that “these industry trends may interest you.”
The key to sharing work-related articles with former colleagues is to get the timing right. Sending an article every week may seem annoying, whereas sending a yearly email with updates may seem like you’ve forgotten your former teammate exists. Instead, sharing work-related articles via email once every quarter is a good guideline.
How Can You Choose Which Method to Stay in Contact?
It’s not necessary to use every method listed here to maintain professional relationships after changing jobs; the best way to choose the optimum approach to stay in contact with your ex-colleague is to consider the kind of professional relationship you have and would like to have with them. For example, do you consider them a work friend or a mentor? Do you want to stay in touch or attend conferences with this colleague?
Maintaining professional relationships with former colleagues can be mutually beneficial, whether they were friends, mentors, managers, or worked in a different department. You should never forget that even if you haven’t spoken to your ex-colleagues in a few years, reaching out via social media and rekindling a connection can be beneficial. You can then make it a priority to stay in contact and cultivate your relationship by making it a habit to check in with them every quarter.
So, which methods have you tried to maintain professional relationships after relocating to a new workplace? Always try to cultivate professional relationships with colleagues and receive mutual professional benefits.
