My thoughts exactly. It should not be out of the blue as others ought to know that performance is lacking, not because someone told them, but they saw the lacking performance.

Would love to know more about this. My understanding of the law is that you can’t defame, slander, or discriminate. Thus, as a risk mitigation strategy, most organization’s legal counsel will set policies against disclosure. I haven’t ever seen anything about it actually being against the law. Is that state law or federal law?

Thanks!

Great point, Gregg. Especially with large RIFs, I think part of the problem may be that decision-makers don’t always know everything involved in an employee’s role and don’t have a plan in place yet to cover those responsibilities. Again, I vote for transparency – just say you don’t yet know who will be covering all of this but you are working on a plan (which hopefully they are!).

Just like I am not an HR professional, I am also not a lawyer. But here is what I understand about the law in this regard. There is no law that says you can’t talk about why an employee was let go, even if the reason was poor performance. There are lots of laws that say you can’t defame, slander, or discriminate against people. As a risk mitigation strategy, many organizations have policies in place that prohibit people from talking about why an employee left or giving a reference (good or bad) about a former employee. Again, not because it is illegal (if what you are saying is true) but because there is a lot of room for differing perceptions and interpretations and therefore opens an organization up to risk.

So, for me, it is a matter of judgement, knowing an organization’s policy, and if you are in a position to influence that policy deciding what level of risk you are comfortable with.

Thanks for the great comment.

Rachel, absolutely great advice.

Excellent article! You did place your disclaimer in about not being the perfect manager. Who is? HR professionals like myself would advise not to give too much detail in order to mitigate future risk to the organization. That said, the climate in each state or locale plays into what you should or should not say. In California where I work, saying nothing is the benchmark to follow.

In your example, I would be surprised if the others in his peer group did not already have an idea of what issues were present. I would leave it up the the terrminated employee to decide how much to disclose in an effort to respect his privacy and demonstrate that I would use the same standard for anyone who has left for any reason.

Either way, we are all human and have to follow our values with regard to the respect and dignity of the people involved. Again, excellent article and thank you for living you values!

David

I once had a manager call me at home on the weekend and ask if I could present some information at meeting the next day because Bob wouldn’t be available. I came in early to prep for the presentation that I wouldn’t normally have been giving and did the best I could. I heard through the grapevine that Bob had committed and attempted to cover up a serious violation of policy. Of course my manager couldn’t tell us that,only that Bob was no longer with the company and how we would handle the work load until a replacement could be hired. At our very next weekly staff meeting, one of the topics was the policy that I had heard was violated and the example was how I heard it was violated, along with a discussion on ethics and the repercussions of NOT reporting something.

Sometimes during the termination meeting, we have discussed with the employee that is being let go s/he would like to have communicated to his/her colleagues. It ‘feels better’ to be on the same page about it. A caviat to that discussion can be what information is provided when a prospective employer contacts us for a reference.

When peers to the person that was let go have come to me to discuss concerns about it (which is usually fear of being next), I reassure them as in the example above about a process and that being let go should never be a surprise to someone. I also encourage them to continue to be a friend and supportive of the individual that was let go. This gives them a sense of ease that there were no hard feelings or ‘sides’ to be taken.