Shawnee Love   •  
July 19, 2010

If you read  July’s HR Enthusiast, you know I decided to put a moratorium on writing about how to fire people.  However, I recently heard a story about a person being terminated from their job for a relatively small blip in a long, fruitful career that I have to share. This story was told to me by a “survivor”, an employee who was still with the company and was supposed to be “unaffected” by the company’s decision (at least according to the manager who shared the news). “Unaffected” couldn’t be further from the truth.

As a person who has been at this a long time, I have unfortunately had a role to play in numerous terminations, typically for reasons that were no fault of the employees and in a few odd cases for reasons that were.

One thing I think managers rarely consider carefully enough is the effect a termination has on the other employees in the organization.

In a mass layoff scenario, the “survivors” often feel terrible guilt, because their colleagues are now unemployed while they remain, and also because they are so thankful for that fact (especially when the economy is in dire straits).

In a situation where a single employee is let go for no fault of his own, whether due to restructuring or lack of fit or one of the myriad of other reasons companies come up with, colleagues who remain are often left worrying and wondering “why that guy and not me”. While those feelings may fade, the disillusionment and damage to the employees’ trust in the organization coupled with the  lingering concern that “it could happen to me” are unseen but heavily felt implications that managers need to consider.

In my experience, if you have to fire an employee, the way to prevent lingering doubts in the survivors is to clearly explain three critical and increasingly important points:

1. The business goals,
2. The plan for moving forward, and
3. How the survivor(s) fit within the plan.

Effectively delivered, this communication will go a long way towards reassuring your remaining employees. Of course, the best way to reassure your employees is to not terminate in the first place.

I hope you will visit again next week, because I am going to put the boots to the “people are disposable/layoff mentality” that permeated North America during the last recession.