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By Jon Hyman
Aug. 2, 2016
Our life experiences dictate our worldview. Such is the case with my opinion on the corporate layoff, as it has recently hit very close to home.
For the sake of anonymity, I’ll speak in hypotheticals.
An employee (I’ll call her “Jane”) has worked for Company X for nearly a decade over two different tenures. By all accounts, Jane is a good employee and well-regarded by her peers. Company X recently agreed to acquire Company Y, which, unfortunately, has made Jane’s position redundant. As a result, Company X decides to eliminate Jane’s position. So far, so normal.
Here, however, is where the story takes a turn. Company X, for lack of better description, sandbags Jane. It made the decision to eliminate her position in March, yet doesn’t communicate it to her until May, when it calls her into a conference room, tells her she has been laid off, and that it’s her last day of employment. Jane, shell-shocked, packs her office, takes her severance agreement and leaves. Jane later discovers that the negative and unwarranted performance review she received in April was part of a plan to support Company X’s decision to include her in the May layoff.
Employers, we need to approach layoffs differently. Employees caught in the net of a corporate downsizing aren’t necessarily bad employees. More often than not, they are victims of circumstance. Yet, too often we treat them like hardened criminals. I know of employers that perp-walk the recently laid off out of the building with armed escorts. What message does this send to the laid-off employee and to the employees left behind? That we don’t think of you as a person, but as a cog in the machine, which we likely don’t trust. This mindset needs to change.
What happened to treating employees with dignity, fairness and respect? Just because we are laying people off doesn’t mean that we should stop exhibiting these values.
How can we treat employees more like human beings in handling layoffs? Let me offer four suggestions.
The bottom line? Treat your employees like human beings throughout the layoff process, and everyone will be better as a result.
What happened to treating employees with dignity, fairness and respect? Just because we are laying people off doesn’t mean that we should stop exhibiting these values.
Jon Hyman is a partner at Meyers, Roman, Friedberg & Lewis in Cleveland. To comment, email editors@workforce.com. Follow Hyman’s blog at Workforce.com/PracticalEmployer.
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