Techno Finance and Executive Diary...

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

What Is the Right Way Of Sacking Employees?

Sometimes the way that companies behave leaves you open-mouthed with astonishment. Take the way some handle the sacking of employees " Guy was a trainer, travelling all over to various offices. He was here in our office to deliver Lotus Notes training to about 20 people. Yep, they showed up for the class only to see a quickly scrawled note on the whiteboard informing them class was cancelled.

We found out later he was on the list, his manager knew (as did my manager about one of the ppl on our team) a couple days before and tried to arrange things so this poor guy wasn't in Chicago the day he was to be laid off.

No, said HR: this has to be super-secret and no one can get any hint that there are layoffs or it will be anarchy among the workers. Telling this guy to not go to Chicago on Tuesday might upset the balance of the elemental forces of nature! A@@hats.

So, the manager has no choice but to watch Bob pack his things and take a flight to Chicago, knowing he was going to have to call him there to tell him he was out of a job. The best part is they were supposed to coordinate the "involuntary separations" at 10:00, presumably so word would not spread to those affected before their managers got to them. Of course, word spread early in the day and people knew names and everything hours before this damn super-secret plan was to go into action. Poor Bob heard from a stranger that he was "on the list". He called his boss and asked if this was true, was told yes. So he wrote the note on the wall, headed to the nearest open bar (8 am) and proceeded to drink his return ticket."
It seems that the managers had reached the decision that large numbers of employees were going to be laid off. It was also decided that letting any of this information out early would create a panic among the staff. Well, one of those workers was a corporate trainer who traveled around the country doing computer training. What could they do about him?

According to me, "the manager had no choice but to watch Bob pack his things and take a flight to Chicago, knowing he was going to have to call him there to tell him he was out of a job." So, yes, this employee got to find out he was out of a job while on the road, hundreds of miles from home.

Despite all of the planning, word apparently did leak out. All of the people who were about to be sacked were aware of it before hand, including the one who was traveling. So, what did that employee decide to do instead of his training class?

"He called his boss and asked if this was true, was told yes. So he wrote the note on the wall, headed to the nearest open bar (8 am) and proceeded to drink his return ticket."

Labels: human resource

Posted by "CPerformance" :: 9:50 AM :: 0 comments