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Here's what I don't understand about firing. Why not give any warning? Why not give people time to find another job? I mean if they were good enough for you to

Here's what I don't understand about firing. Why not give any warning? Why not give people time to find another job? I mean if they were good enough for you to hire them and sit through the 2-3 week interview/hiring process - it should be fair to give them say a month of warning to tap their network, and hop over to another company. It seem unnecessarily painful and arbitrary to just say - "Your fired. Get out" - especially if they are great people, and all you are doing is shutting down their project. Acts like these remind me of the old courts held by Kings during the medieval times.

jzwinck 14y ago
Because time and time again, disgruntled and often soon-to-be or recently-former employees sabotage or steal from their employers. It's an IT security best practice to disable logins immediately when someone is notified or gives notice of termination. Often during the first HR sit-down. It's cold, but at least remaining employees aren't put at risk.
- Evbn 14y ago
  I have never seen this happen when someone quits a job, but I am sure it happens in some places.
michaelochurch 14y ago
Well, usually that's part of the severance arrangement: you get to represent yourself as employed for some amount of time. You do want people out of the office once you deliver the news, because even if you fire people fairly, they're not going to be doing useful work. Otherwise, I agree 100%. Many companies use PIPs instead of severance offers in order to build a "performance"-based case against an employee. (This is sometimes part of a layoff being dressed up as a performance-based cut, and sometimes not.) That works out horribly. It's actually cheaper, considering morale issues, to cut a 3-month severance than to put someone on a 2-month PIP, because most people turn toxic during the "walking dead" period of the PIP. What PIPs are about is externalized costs: the HR office claims it "saved money" on severance payments, but the team and manager have to deal with a walking dead employee for 2 months.
- Evbn 14y ago
  I have never heard of severance being used to artificially extend the termination date (and I expect health insurance vendors would crack down on it), but I have never heard of termination date mattering in terms of getting the next job anyway.
_dps 14y ago
The reason is threefold: morale, liability, and inability to use the worker for any long-term planning. Having a person who knows they will be fired roaming the halls, poorly motivated is an obvious risk for the morale of the remaining employees. And it just drags out the pain of separation, even if the separation is otherwise amicable. Second, there is some risk, no matter how generous the severance package, that the employee will become disgruntled and desire to harm the company. Even if it's a 1 in 1000 chance, the damage that a disgruntled insider can wreak is enormous. Huge downside, very little upside. Finally, if they stay, they are now effectively temps. They can't be used in anything but short-term work because you don't know when they'll get the magic offer and be out the door. A good severance package (say 2 months of salary, plenty of buffer to find a new job) costs just as much as keeping them on for two months after a warning, but has none of the downside risk. The only thing you lose by doing this is the very marginal short-term work you could allocate to them in the interim, which they would be poorly motivated to execute to the top of their ability.

jzwinck 14y ago

Because time and time again, disgruntled and often soon-to-be or recently-former employees sabotage or steal from their employers. It's an IT security best practice to disable logins immediately when someone is notified or gives notice of termination. Often during the first HR sit-down. It's cold, but at least remaining employees aren't put at risk.

Evbn 14y ago
I have never seen this happen when someone quits a job, but I am sure it happens in some places.

michaelochurch 14y ago

Well, usually that's part of the severance arrangement: you get to represent yourself as employed for some amount of time. You do want people out of the office once you deliver the news, because even if you fire people fairly, they're not going to be doing useful work. Otherwise, I agree 100%. Many companies use PIPs instead of severance offers in order to build a "performance"-based case against an employee. (This is sometimes part of a layoff being dressed up as a performance-based cut, and sometimes not.) That works out horribly. It's actually cheaper, considering morale issues, to cut a 3-month severance than to put someone on a 2-month PIP, because most people turn toxic during the "walking dead" period of the PIP. What PIPs are about is externalized costs: the HR office claims it "saved money" on severance payments, but the team and manager have to deal with a walking dead employee for 2 months.

Evbn 14y ago
I have never heard of severance being used to artificially extend the termination date (and I expect health insurance vendors would crack down on it), but I have never heard of termination date mattering in terms of getting the next job anyway.

_dps 14y ago

The reason is threefold: morale, liability, and inability to use the worker for any long-term planning. Having a person who knows they will be fired roaming the halls, poorly motivated is an obvious risk for the morale of the remaining employees. And it just drags out the pain of separation, even if the separation is otherwise amicable. Second, there is some risk, no matter how generous the severance package, that the employee will become disgruntled and desire to harm the company. Even if it's a 1 in 1000 chance, the damage that a disgruntled insider can wreak is enormous. Huge downside, very little upside. Finally, if they stay, they are now effectively temps. They can't be used in anything but short-term work because you don't know when they'll get the magic offer and be out the door. A good severance package (say 2 months of salary, plenty of buffer to find a new job) costs just as much as keeping them on for two months after a warning, but has none of the downside risk. The only thing you lose by doing this is the very marginal short-term work you could allocate to them in the interim, which they would be poorly motivated to execute to the top of their ability.