A reader writes:
What do you think of the policy of letting problematic employees go by eliminating their position?
I work at an organization that does this instead of firing people. Among long-time employees there’s a joke that it’s impossible to get fired here — they can think of one guy, nine years back, who was fired for theft (it was a relatively minor amount, and was not reported to police.) Everyone else with performance issues, no matter how ridiculous, eventually gets downsized.
I’m not in management or HR but I have legitimate access to a fair amount of behind-the-scenes detail due to my position. I am discreet and don’t gossip. I am amazed by some of the situations and how they’re resolved. Things drag on for months. Nobody gets a PIP to the best of my knowledge, although supervisors and HR have talked to the employees about the issues, so it’s not totally out of the blue.
I think my employer’s argument is that it’s easier to quietly get rid of difficult employees with a small severance package, and we don’t give references anyway (just confirm employment dates.) From the employee’s perspective it’s nice for reasons that you’ve outlined before — they can job-hunt while they’re still employed, and they can point to their position being eliminated as the reason they’re looking.
This happened recently to Jane, a longtime employee who I’m friendly with and actually quite like outside of work (although I’d have quit if assigned to her as my manager.) She’s bright and hardworking, but she’s prickly, condescending to everyone (including VIPs and board members who grew to dislike her), and as far as I can tell, simply cannot receive and process criticism about her management style— and management is a key part of her position. If I were Jane, the fact that I was being downsized by this company would ring all sorts of alarm bells. But she is oblivious to her own role in this, at least publicly, which I guess supports the company’s standpoint that there’s no point in trying to discuss it with her further.
Do employers “owe” more honesty to problem employees? I can’t help feeling like they’re doing her an enormous disservice. At the same time, I can see from her reaction that firing her would likely have been a lot more arduous than quietly easing her out. I thought about leveling with her, even at the risk of costing us our friendship. But I don’t think I can, partly because I can’t divulge knowledge of some of the details, but mostly because they’ve clearly opted for the “it’s not you, it’s us” routine. I feel management could have made clear to her something along the lines of: we’re letting you go because you’ve alienated so many people, and you need to seriously evaluate your soft skills if you’re going to succeed in this kind of role elsewhere.
This has happened with five employees in the time I’ve been here (although obviously the details differ). Each one of them was angry and hurt, and seemingly oblivious to their role in the situation, and anyone else in the organization would say they should have seen it coming, so a reasonable person wouldn’t be in that position in the first place. I can’t articulate why but this seems like a terrible policy to me.
It’s a morale issue for coworkers who are glad to see Jane finally go but resentful of the circumstances. Full disclosure that I was fired once — nicely. I was hired to do X but the job turned out to be much more Y and I was terrible at it. But being fired, while totally humiliating to me in the moment, was ultimately a great learning experience that informed a lot of my behavior going forward, both in gaining clarity about a position during job interviews and in how to reach out for help while working. Several years later I actually wrote a thank-you to them. Anyway, I’d love your thoughts on the topic.
First of all, did they really eliminate those positions? Or did they re-fill them soon after?
If they re-filled them, those weren’t “position eliminations” at all, and if any of those “laid off” people noticed that, they’re going to feel lied to … and when people you let go think you lied to them about the reason, they often start wondering if the real reason was something illegal (discrimination, retaliation for reporting harassment, etc.). That’s when people consult lawyers and you end up dealing with legal headaches, even if there wasn’t any actual illegal action.
If they didn’t re-fill those jobs and did genuinely eliminate the positions, then I’m wondering whether it actually made good business sense to cut those roles (in which case, fine) or whether they lost roles they actually needed just so they could call it a lay-off and avoid the hard conversation of firing someone. (Here’s the difference in the two terms.) I suspect it was the latter, since it seems unlikely that every time your company has let a low performer go, it just happened to conveniently be a role they wanted to eliminate anyway.
But even aside from that, it’s generally a bad practice to do this. It means that your employer probably isn’t having honest conversations with people about their performance, which means that they’re not giving people a chance to improve, which means that people are losing their jobs without realizing there were serious problems, which means they’re being blindsided by something pretty terrible (on top of the aforementioned lack of any chance to fix it). It also means your company’s managers aren’t managing, since laying out clear expectations and holding people to them and talking to people when they need to things differently are all fundamental parts of a manager’s job.
It also means that other people — people who aren’t being fake-laid-off — are seeing this happen and realizing that they too might be blindsided with this one day, rather than hearing it straight when their work has problems. And they might wonder what else the company misleads people about, or what else they’re too weak-willed to deal with in an honest, up-front way.
So sure, it’s easier in the short-term to just announce to someone one day that their position is being eliminated and “hey, we’re so sorry but there’s not any work for you.” Now they don’t have to have a hard conversation about what it really stemmed from! But it’s a terrible practice for all the reasons above.
Firing is not some terrible, shameful thing that companies need to hide and send themselves into contortions to avoid. If they’re fair with employees and lay out clear expectations and are candid with people when they’re not meeting them and give them a chance to improve, they don’t need to — and shouldn’t — hide what the decision is really about when they decide to let someone go.
is it bad to lay people off instead of firing them? was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.
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