The first thing to consider is your company culture and policies. In the Netherlands, it is quite normal when you quit a job, that you give notice 1 or 2 months in advance. You continue to work for them, make your best effort and then part ways in a friendly manner. I have heard of other work cultures in different countries where as soon as you tell them you’re leaving, you get locked out of your accounts, and are suspected to no longer have the company's best interest at heart. If the latter is the case I probably wouldn’t inform anyone of my plans. If it is more like the first situation, you could consider telling them.

Are you close with your colleagues? I know I am with a couple of them. I see them outside of work, we sometimes go out for lunch, and text each other when it is too long until the next workday to say tell each other something, or just check in if someone had a bad day. I consider some colleagues my friends, and I wouldn’t want to withhold something as big and important as a move abroad from my friends. I want to share our milestones, when our visa gets approved, or when we buy our tickets and set the official date to move. I want to invite them to come to visit, if they are ever in the area, or encourage them to come to visit even if they are not close by. I told them we were thinking of moving when we made the definite decision that it was going to happen. This was after we came back from our holiday to New Zealand to find out if we wanted to move there. 

There are also colleagues I am not so close with, I’d also want to inform them of our impending adventure, although not as soon or detailed as my friends, because they probably care less. I’d like the people I work with to know that I will not be there in a couple of months. I waited to tell most of my colleagues until our visa got approved, and it was definite that we were going.

My boss knew I wanted to move to New Zealand, long before my colleagues did. I told him in a performance review that we had plans, not a solid plan yet, but plans were forming and that we would attempt to emigrate in the time span of 2-3 years. It turned out to be 1-2 years. 

As a developer there are a lot of companies interested in your skills, there is a shortage and I get weekly, if not daily sometimes, messages from recruiters or companies that want to get in touch with me about an opportunity. People leave all the time and for different reasons, and they can do so within 1-2 months. A small company could theoretically find itself with a whole different team in that time span. Telling my boss that I would be leaving the country in about 2 years didn’t set off any alarms and gave him no reason to believe I would be working less motivated in my current role. For me, it felt right to tell him my plans, as I wanted to be honest with my plans. (I’m a terrible liar and also not very good at keeping secrets, especially large scale exciting secrets).

I believe an employer-employee relationship is just like a relationship, it needs honesty and trust. It felt good to be honest about it and communicate with my employer when things were actually set in motion. My boss reacted very positively to the news, he even gave me contact information of a friend that had made the move himself, and asked that friend if we could ask him some questions about his move and New Zealand in general. 

My trust and honesty were rewarded later when my boss asked me to stay with the company on a permanent contract until we would leave. This was a win-win, they had the security of me staying with them and they could well prepare for my leave by looking for a replacement on time. I could set up and write documents to transfer my work to another developer and have the security of a stable income until we left.

This development could have also gone in a different way I realise: I could have been passed for new roles or projects because they knew I was leaving in the future. I have thought it might affect my friendship with colleagues as well, as they could be thinking that I wasn’t worth their effort or time as I was planning to leave anyway. I thought of how they might only want people in their team that were in it for the long run, to grow with the company. However this is never a given, people can, and do, leave companies for better opportunities, or due to different and unforeseen circumstances.

I am glad I got to share these life-changing plans and my excitement for it with the people I hang out with most of my days. I am grateful our company culture values honesty and is open to people’s long term plans and supports them. I hope you will be able to share your journey with your colleagues if the circumstances are right. It is such an exciting time and it feels great to be able to share about it honestly.