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I've been on the receiving end of a layoff like that,but I've also seen it done vastly differently. Our place has been through a couple of rounds of layoffs (a

I've been on the receiving end of a layoff like that,but I've also seen it done vastly differently. Our place has been through a couple of rounds of layoffs (as the result of outsourcing). Both went through lengthy - I'm talking months - periods of "consultation" where the company worked with employee reps to try to make sure the correct people were retained (both in terms of looking for opportunities for voluntary redundancy and seeing whether affected people could be reallocated to other areas), and for those who were going to be let go there was a lot of help in terms of career advice, working with external companies looking for new recruits etc, to try to make the process as pain-free as possible. Unsurprisingly, the effects of those two approaches are vastly different both for those who are made redundant and for those who stay. I get the impression that many of the smarter companies, at least in the UK, are beginning to recognise this.

arethuza 13y ago
The law in the UK actually specifies that consultation has to happen during redundancy: https://www.gov.uk/redundant-your-rights/consultation https://www.gov.uk/redundant-your-rights/consultation
gutnor 13y ago
The most painless I have seen is the one my it colleague got at a bank: "Hi, you are fired, if you go sign the paper at HR today and you are out of here before 9:30 AM, we give you 6 months salary and an added 10K compensation for the June bonus, quite better than the legal package of 4 weeks pay you are entitled to. What do you say ?" Consultation periods are just draining the moral of the unaffected team. Good luck if you have any work to do with the affected team.
- rch 13y ago
  Agreed - a friend of mine who was part of an internal audit team at a large financial company was let go with similarly generous terms. We went on vacation for a couple of weeks, and she found another fantastic job a short while after we came back. While it I have no idea if it would apply elsewhere in the world, I feel like giving people a window (doesn't have to be 6 months) where they truly don't have to worry can have a profound impact on their ability to move along with their career, even under these circumstances.
crag 13y ago
When I left Kidder (an investment bank long gone) I got six months pay and benefits, a end-of year projected bonus based on my earnings for the firm from the prior year and a nice bottle of bubbly. I even got a job. They were closing my department not down-sizing. My VP told me the firm didn't want to leave "blood on the street" (Wall Street). In other words, rep. Now in 2008 this changed seriously. Cause banks were dropping over like flies. When Bear (Sterns) and Lehman failed it got worse. But I hear now it's back to worrying about "blood on the street". None of this applied to the back-office staff. You got fired there, you got a few weeks and that was that.

arethuza 13y ago

The law in the UK actually specifies that consultation has to happen during redundancy: https://www.gov.uk/redundant-your-rights/consultation https://www.gov.uk/redundant-your-rights/consultation

gutnor 13y ago

The most painless I have seen is the one my it colleague got at a bank: "Hi, you are fired, if you go sign the paper at HR today and you are out of here before 9:30 AM, we give you 6 months salary and an added 10K compensation for the June bonus, quite better than the legal package of 4 weeks pay you are entitled to. What do you say ?" Consultation periods are just draining the moral of the unaffected team. Good luck if you have any work to do with the affected team.

rch 13y ago
Agreed - a friend of mine who was part of an internal audit team at a large financial company was let go with similarly generous terms. We went on vacation for a couple of weeks, and she found another fantastic job a short while after we came back. While it I have no idea if it would apply elsewhere in the world, I feel like giving people a window (doesn't have to be 6 months) where they truly don't have to worry can have a profound impact on their ability to move along with their career, even under these circumstances.

crag 13y ago

When I left Kidder (an investment bank long gone) I got six months pay and benefits, a end-of year projected bonus based on my earnings for the firm from the prior year and a nice bottle of bubbly. I even got a job. They were closing my department not down-sizing. My VP told me the firm didn't want to leave "blood on the street" (Wall Street). In other words, rep. Now in 2008 this changed seriously. Cause banks were dropping over like flies. When Bear (Sterns) and Lehman failed it got worse. But I hear now it's back to worrying about "blood on the street". None of this applied to the back-office staff. You got fired there, you got a few weeks and that was that.