Unpleasant layoff

[ntg]

Just wanted to run this through a few more people to check my sanity.

Last year wasn't so good for our company and we had to cut down the salary of the four shareholders in order to avoid firing an employee. I took a pay cut of 30% and my boss took a pay cut of 80% (equating his salary with mine). This allowed us to ensure that our business plan will carry us through 2009 no matter what. At the beginning of this year we informed our employees of the facts, assuring them that no one would be fired during 2009 for economic reasons no matter what happened.

At that point, one of our employees asked that we keep him informed if anything changed because he has a family to fend for. This guy worked as a software developer. Super-smart as a coder, with a lot of personality quirks that affected his job but I lived with it because the guy delivered, and who hasn't some rough edges anyway?

At the end of September we started laying out our business plan for 2010. Some new leads have turned up but the sales process for our products is rather long so we had to look at best-case and worst-case scenarios. As it turned out, the worst-case scenario necessitated that we slightly reduce our costs even further by firing one person. We selected the person that had the least involvement in projects and that turned out to be the aforementioned developer. At the beginning of October I broke the news to him. I indicated that if no new sale or a very strong possibility of a new sale materialized until the end of the year, we would have to let him go at 31/12 - until then he would still be with us and paid his normal salary. If we had to lay him off, he would get his legal compensation which was 3 monthly salaries. I was very careful to explain that this was a possibility and not a certainty and that it had nothing to do with him as a person or developer. He wasn't thrilled with joy of course but was reasonable and even thanked us for giving him this heads-up.

Three days later he said to me that he preferred to be fired immediately because he didn't feel to be a part of the company anymore. He also indicated that he thinks we played him, that we're just trying to make him quit so we can save up on his salary and compensation. When I asked what happened that changed his mind about the subject so radically in three days he said to me to forget what he said three days ago. For the next few days he was in the office for a few hours only without asking anyone for permission or taking a leave of absence. Just today my boss returned from an international trip and he had a face-to-face with the guy. Upon hearing that he thinks that we're just trying to make him quit he went ballistic, a lot of angry words were exchanged and he was fired on the spot. After the guy left, my boss said that he would pay him his salaries for this whole year plus his proper compensation but he doesn't want him to set foot in the premises again - I'm not sure that he won't rethink and just pay him his legal compensation but, knowing him, he may do just what he said.

This situation is obviously not very pleasant for anyone, especially for the ex-employee. It was a bit of an emotional blow for me personally to have a person that worked for me more than three years think that we were just trying to con him, especially after the fact that all shareholders of the company voluntarily cut a good chunk out of their own pay checks before considering firing people. However, I feel that we did all we could and were extremely fair with him.

I'm posting this here because I'd just like to hear opinions by people in this forum who are detached from the situation.

[DeanMc]

Finding information out like this is never nice. I think you guys made the best of a bad situation. My missus got two days notice and then put on short leave (Which is unpaid leave for 4 weeks). It could have been that him and his partner got stressed about the potential lose of earnings and unfortunately this can compound into resentment.

Your boss may not have helped matters but the thing is this guy was slacking off work and even if your being fired tomorrow you still should go to work today. At least your boss is paying him the whole year where most places wouldnt have.

[Shaggy Hiker]

I'd say you bent over backwards for the guy and his response was bizarre. I work in a field that is often grant driven, and we have lots of people who know that they are only around as long as we can keep them around (I've been in one of those positions, myself, though only years ago), so perhaps we are better trained to accept this type of thing, but that guy had a really interesting view of the world.

At one time, your job was your identity. Once you were full time with a company, you were going to stay there forever. That still happens in some places, but it is nowhere near as common. The replacement, for many people, is to look at the actual economics of the situation. For your employee to feel that being fired immediately is somehow superior, suggests that he may have been working more for loyalty than money as his motivation. That doesn't make it any easier, though.

[RobDog888]

Sounds like the guy may have had some personality traits that under these circumstances are not unexpected for him. You guys are a hell of alot nicer then the vast majority of the companies out there to say the least. Usually no one ever gets a heads up notice of a possible layoff at some future point in time if things dont materialize for hte company.

Sounds like he may have wanted to be let go now so he can have 3 months off paid as the holidays are nice to be off of work if its paid. Seems weird that he also would want to get fired unless he had a lead on a new job possibly and wanted a paid vacation until the new job started.

Dont sweat it you did due dilligence. Sounds like he is smart enough to get a new job so sure things will work out for him. Just chalk it up to his personality and move forward.

[Cander]

Ok maybe it is just those personality traits you mentioned, but you have to wonder if he is thinking he can start a wrongful termination suit if he was adamant he gets fired immediately. Just something very weird about that.

[RobDog888]

Oh SNAP! Cander made a non-chit chat post lol.

But that is a good point but still. The employee was being insubordinate (doesnt give him any right to sue) and does he really think hes going to be able to sue the company for any money at all seeing how they are in dire straights? You cant get blood from a turnup.

[ntg]

I don't live in the US or UK and don't know the relevant law there. In Greece a business can fire any number of employees per month for gross misconduct (insubordination, sexual harassment etc) or up to a small percentage per month for other reasons (obviously it's illegal to fire someone because of hard feelings or to punish them for something they did if you can settle the issue with other means). In our case this might turn to be economic reasons - obviously it doesn't make sense to close down the whole company and send everyone to unemployment when you can sacrifice a single person but save the others for a whole year. It's not nice or pleasant but it's necessary.

In addition, in Greece if you notify an employee that he will be fired after a specific time period, he is entitled up to 50% of his compensation. However that is not what we had in mind. We were prepared to keep him until the end of the year and if our sales or sales prospect didn't materialize he would be fired and get the complete compensation. I understand the frustration and hurt feelings - I would have been frustrated myself. But still his final response is completely illogical and doesn't make any sense to me, unless he has pursued a new job lead. Even in this case, I feel that we would support such a decision and still pay him his full compensation if he had only come clean about it and said so.

At the end of the day, the only thing that makes any sense is just what RobDog888 said - consider the matter closed and just move on.

[Cander]

Oh SNAP! Cander made a non-chit chat post lol.

But that is a good point but still. The employee was being insubordinate (doesnt give him any right to sue) and does he really think hes going to be able to sue the company for any money at all seeing how they are in dire straights? You cant get blood from a turnup.

I have been making other posts elsewhere this week. Mostly in the C# forum.

Well if he is dumb enough to turn down a couple more months of work plus severance, maybe he is dumb enough to try to get squeeze that turnip.

[FunkyDexter]

you have to wonder if he is thinking he can start a wrongful termination suit

That was my initial thought when reading your original post. I'd get some legal advice if I was you but, from what you've said, I don't think you have a lot to worry about.

My only concern would be that I'm not sure he has been subordinate. Certainly he was not turning up to work but in the UK (don't know about the US) you can't actually be sacked for that without going through a disciplinary process. And him saying that he thought you were trying to get him to quit isn't insubordination either. It's paranoid and a bit weird, certainly, but it really doesn't constitute insubordination.

I don't think you'll need to worry about that though because you're paying him three months salary which is more that he would be entitled to under a redundancy. Any tribunal is going to find, at worst, that he was unfairly dismissed but has already been fully compensated.

[JuggaloBrotha]

I have to agree with the other comments in here thusfar but one thing I would not have done is tell the guy that a possibility of him being laid off might come up, that kind of information usually only leads to situations like that.

I also believe since there was a "possibility" of him being paid off that the guy was wanting to get fired for a huge chunk of paid time off, odds also indicate that he might already have another job as a possibility lined up so he might have been able to start working with the new company a month later then, essentially, have double the paycheck for 2 months. That type of a situation in this economy would be nice to have.

[abhijit]

If I read this correctly, the guy's going to get a whole year's salary for not coming to work.

Here's my hypothesis:
A person's behavior is often influenced by his outlook. My thought is, the guy didn't feel that the company was going to keep him around. In that case, he must have found another job. If the new job required him to join ASAP, he thought of calling it quits at the present job.

[ntg]

If I read this correctly, the guy's going to get a whole year's salary for not coming to work.

Not a whole year - the rest of this year plus the compensation...but I get your point.

[abhijit]

Not a whole year - the rest of this year plus the compensation...but I get your point.

That's like having your cake and eating it too.

[Jenner]

Yea, but ntg's boss doesn't have to do that for him. If he so chose, he could drop it all except for the compensation. He's got one hell of a boss if he's that nice.

I think you guys were more than fair. I'd hate to be in that position. I was once though. I knew our entire department would be disbanded in a month's time and as the low man on the totem pole, I wouldn't be transferred. I started looking immediately and in 4 months had work via a contractor.

That lasted 9 months and then one day, out of the blue, I was told at noon that I wasn't needed anymore and escorted out. No warning at all, hell, I just got some new work from some of the engineers in the department that morning. That was the hardest time I ever had. I'd feel bad if I didn't hate that hostile work environment. Took me 7 months after that to find my current job and so far, we seem to be wethering out this economy well. Our president and primary shareholder is getting old though and is looking to sell the company though so the future is still not completely certain. I figure I have some pull being their only programmer and head engineer, so I keep my fingers crossed when new owners are found, they don't move the company to China or something.

[ntg]

Well, that's how I see it as well. After the fact, I am tempted to agree with JuggaloBrotha who indicated that breaking such news to an employee can only lead to bad situations. However, both my boss and myself felt that it's better to give the heads-up because if it finally got to the point that we had to let him go, he'd have almost three months head start to find a new job. We're a small company and it's all close and personal so it wouldn't be easy to sleep at night if you kick out someone without any warning at all, especially since he explicitly asked for just that at the beginning of the year.

[Shaggy Hiker]

I think you handled it very well. Hard to say what is in his head, but I wonder if Abhijit didn't get it right: He had another job, and needed to get out quick.