Business Owners & HR Professionals...
Some straight talk from an expert on layoffs and firings. Sample layoff letter.

March 1, 2008

Terminate Employee - Or, if you can't sack for political reasons

Terminate fairly for both your business & the employees. Our recommended approach

Or, if you can't sack for political reasons or the potential cost is too high, find an alternative to separation you can live with. Remember former personnel can begin a smear campaign against you and the business and this will only add to your current problems. We briefly covered gathering evidence using escalating discipline and investigations in the last chapter. You don't want to start escalating discipline and find out later your management doesn't agree or, worse yet, discover the insubordinate employee is politically "protected.". While this works for low-risk personnel, this is not the right approach for medium and high risk personnel, which are the majority of termination cases. o Considering your time at ABC Business, what did you like best? Since the employer looks to the Personnel professional as the expert, it's important for the professional to be knowledgeable about layoff procedures, firm policies, anger management and exit interviewing skills. To lay off her, you just keep writing up your observations of her difficult behavior. Not only is this troubling, but fact that you need to layoff employees commonly indicates that your company is not performing up to expectations. You can still terminate employees for misconduct or violation of business policy.

Therefore, if the employee can find any way to sue you for unlawful separation, he'll do it just to even the score. o A discontinuance package shows the remaining employees you're a compassionate employer. The layoff manager is on edge and is ill prepared, the employee in question may become angry and rumors fly around the workplace like wildfire. We know executives are different from rank-in-file workforce, and they need to be treated differently during the dismissal program. Make sure the memorandum gives the official date of lay off.

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Terminate fairly for both your business & the employees. Our recommended approach