Firing employees in person is truly the least you can do.
Readers of The Times have lately seen a flurry of articles about mass layoffs at companies across the tech sector, including some of the industry's best-known names. But for many of the people affected by those layoffs, the news arrived by other means: an email, from the boss or from H.R. Some were chatty, like the missive from Jennifer Tejada, the C.E.O. of PagerDuty, who took a few hundred words to get around to the topic at hand (and rounded it out with a quote from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.). Some were abrupt, like the notifications from Twitter that workers were terminated and, effective immediately, locked out of all company systems. |
In a guest essay published this weekend, Elizabeth Spiers argues they all have one thing in common: They maximize the pain for employees while letting managers off the hook. Termination by email ensures that those in positions of power "will not have to face the shock and devastation that people feel when they lose their livelihoods. It also ensures the managers won't have to weather any direct criticism about the poor leadership that brought everyone to that point." |
She argues that all employers should do the same, but her reasons might surprise you. It's as much a matter of self-interest, she says, as kindness — though that counts for a lot, too. |
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