Editor's Corner

A week ago, I wrote about how some companies are taking a pretty shoddy approach when it comes to laying off employees. A UK company text messaged a sales woman, telling her that she was fired. Then Radio Shack used email to let their staffers know if they had a job or not. I was pretty blunt in my assessment--that neither option should become common practice and that it's a chicken's way out of a tough management task. And not surprisingly more than a few FierceCIO readers agreed:

Gary Lust, a Senior Recruiter from Geoweb Staffing wrote:
Radio Shack's email layoffs are a prime example of "High Tech" without "High Touch", or in this case, no touch. The PR ramifications alone of this type of HR policy are frightening to contemplate. There should be no substitute for at least a brief exit interview. What happens if the market turns around and Radio Shack needs to get big into recruiting new employees?...I would not want to be the HR Rep who has to say, "Yes, we are the company that terminates by email...but otherwise, we are a wonderful place to work." Former employees can be testy enough without leaving them with this kind of taste in their mouth! Beyond the HR/PR ramifications, this is indicative of a more profound problem that we see in all areas of society, namely using technology as a substitute for touch. No company can grow without leveraging technology. However, having a state of the art CRM, for example, is no excuse for not speaking with your customers; Supply Chain Management does not mean that your vendors can do the best job without any interface with the company. All of these systems should be built with the idea of enabling us to do our job more efficiently, but not as a replacement for us doing the job of relationship building. Or, in the case of Radio Shack, maintaining good will and good faith with our former employees. [emphasis mine]  

This is what Julie Wright, President & Founder of (W)right On Communications responded with:
It is poor form. First, what it communicates to the fired employee is that the person's service was not valued enough to earn the courtesy of a face-to-face dismissal. Second, losing a job is an emotional situation to find one's self in, and an email is a notoriously poor mechanism for delivering emotional news. Compassion is impossible in an email because the sender is not there at the time of receipt to share the recipient's pain or discomfort. Third, Radio Shack senior executives must not have confidence in their middle management and supervisors to entrust them with the task of delivering the news to their dismissed direct reports--when these things are done in person, the weakest link in the process is the tactless manager or supervisor who botches the termination.

Finally, the lasting impact of this communication choice is not the impact on the dismissed employee but the impact on the remaining Radio Shack workforce. The unintended message from the employer to the employees is that they're all a commodity.

This reminds me of situations we've seen in our communication consulting business where clients worry so much about the cost of doing something right that they lose sight of the immeasurable costs of doing it wrong.

Nigel opined:
I agree with you. Firing by email is very poor leadership. Laying people off is very hard. Especially doing it with compassion. Often these people have done nothing wrong, they are just caught in a difficult position. The people who are left will lose all respect for their current management. Perhaps this is why Radio Shack is in the position it finds itself in.

Some other readers shared their incredible layoff experiences, proving that Radio Shack isn't the only company that needs some heavy-duty training when it comes to layoff scenarios:

Craig relates the following story:
Working in the oil and gas industries has shown some shocking variances in termination procedures. A couple of notable ones: Amoco, prior to the BP merger, announced a reduction to take place over months. The announcement was in an envelope that was taped to your monitor, visible when you walked to your workstation in the morning. A second was at PanCanadian Petroleum (now EnCana Corporation), who announced a staff cut on a Monday and followed it by shutting off building access cards for redundant staff. Both nasty.

And this last note from an anonymous reader:
How about my situation. I told my CEO on Friday that I would be on vacation on Monday. He had plans to layoff a small group of employees including me on Monday. He went ahead with the layoff. My son heard on the school bus that I was fired. Because of a flight cancellation and lost luggage, I didn't make it home until Tuesday evening. On Wednesday an article was published in the local newspaper describing the firing and listing my name and another employee's name because we were vice-presidents. I never did meet with the CEO.

- Judy