When Employment Ends Unwanted 1/3

Downsizing, lay-offs, redundancies, contract not renewed, termination notification, getting the sack, being fired, being handed P45. Many different terms and situations but the effect is the same. Employment is coming to an end. No more work.

Call it professional sense of duty or maybe out of the need to offload, I have written a 3-blog series about current realities related to terminations. Initially, on the first part, exploring some reasons as to why it happens from the employee perspective and how to deal with it, also few words about internal communications and 360 feedback tool.

On the second part, what not to do as an employer, choosing the right redundancy selection criteria and how to loose managerial credibility quickly and efficiently when it comes to performance evaluations.

The last part of the blog-series is about the sometimes murky managerial terminations and my final views as to what to do when faced with unwanted termination. 

Why bother?

I have worked as HR lead in over 10 countries and in organisations with large global presence that spans the globe. With this, I have a large amount of professional contacts around the globe, and the network is also globally diverse. I am always delighted to hear from my network and it is a joy how easy LinkedIn has made it.

Recently, a staggering amount of messages and emails have been related to situations where the person has, often times very unexpectedly, been served notice that their employment is ending. The influx of these messages, requests for advise as to what they should do is no doubt reflective to the current world economics, the effects of COVID-19 but the sheer amount of them is vast. There are some differences between industries, but generally speaking, the financial impact of C-19 is tangible everywhere and in every industry. 

Sad fact is how poorly these notifications, the terminations have too often been handled from the employer side. It is still way too common that the actual notice becomes as a total surprise to the employee. In the time of fair and equal, publicly advertised corporate values, company policies and transparency, the message should never come as a surprise. Not in any circumstances. Regardless of the employment status, type of contract or position.

A good company with fair and documented employment policies and transparent, effective internal communications would have already indicated to the individual employee that a contract might not be renewed and would have shared financials, business plans with its employees so that the possibility of re-structuring or redundancies is never a surprise.

What should I do?

I have and will always assist everyone with their questions of ”what should I do” when they are faced with unemployment. With empathy but also with professional curiosity; I will listen, ask questions and assist as much as I can. 

I wanted to share similarities of these discussions that have taken place recently. Although all situations are different, there are many similarities, especially when it comes to dealing with the initial loss and immediate actions that should or could be taken by the employee. I also feel a need to write about and highlight few of the core no-no's when it comes to employer and managerial responsibility.

It is without a doubt that there are times when it is in the best interest of the company, a team or development of the business not to review someone’s contract. And there are times, when a company needs to reduce workforce and to do it, as much as possible, with immediate affect.

I will sue them!

Many of times, when an ex-colleague or someone I have hired or interviewed at some point of my career gets in touch and is facing unemployment, I initially get asked questions relating to the employment law and legality of the termination. With few targeted, clarifying questions, this is often a quick chat. It is very quick to determine if legality has been followed. I also feel that it is very much in my duty to advise against legal battles if I see that it has no legs to stand on.

In most cases, when faced unemployment unexpectedly, the initial reaction is one of the below:

• This was so unexpected!
• But I am a good leader / I am very hard worker – only those that don't perform or don’t hit their targets are fired. So why me?
•  I think this is illegal. Can you help me to build a case to the tribunal/employment law court?
• I will sue them! They will pay for this!
• No-one will ever hire me again.

Everyone reacts differently. Do you know how you would react if you lost your job or position unexpectedly?

The initial reaction when faced with termination is very reflective to the current, personal engagement to the company. The higher the commitment, the bigger the shock. Personal circumstances affect the level of shock and anger; having no savings and a large number of dependants makes the realities of loosing a job always more devastating.

The shock, the anger is also reflective of how hard the situation has hit the employees self-esteem. A healthy sense of own accomplishments gives a baseline that helps to bounce back quicker. But most of all, the level of shock and resistance is reflective to how unexpected it has been. When the disappointment also involves a loss of trust to someone who they had faith and high level of trust towards, it becomes even a bigger shock and that can quickly turn to anger.

Even in the countries where redundancy, disciplinary law clearly states how the communication in case of lay-offs and terminations should be handled, it is still too often not followed. And hence comes as a total shock to the employee. Many of times, this is heartbreaking. A lot of the people I have these conversations with, I know, with first-hand experience, that they are extremely hard working, excellent people leaders, engineers, sales managers. Being fired by someone you trust is difficult to comprehend. And very very difficult to accept. 

Hence I highlight the employers responsibility in effective, timely and transparent communication. In fact, I dare to say, that most tribunals would be avoided with transparent performance evaluations, management following their company policies in relation to disciplinary processes and having clear, open internal communication practises.

SARAH can help

On individual level, after the initial reaction, shock of loosing a job, I encourage to look further, to the future. The discussion and assistance runs deeper than just confirming legality of the termination of employment. In most cases, following the initial ’I can not believe this is happening to me’, the conversation often follows quite universal, natural sequence.

When coaching and implementing change projects, I almost always build the change project or at least the communication plan of the change around SARAH model. This is familiar to many who have had the chance to participate in 360 degree evaluations.

In many organisations, where 360 degree feedback is being introduced for the first time or a person is a first-timer to this powerful tool, the shorter SARA model is often used as part of the coaching session prior to being given the full evaluation report. As one of the most powerful, one person leadership development tools, the 360 degree feedback report for the first timer is always quite a shock to the system.

360 feedback process is comprehensive and reveals the actual perception that people have of the person being evaluated. Here lies the power of this tool. Even with the best of performance reviews in so many organisations the feedback is only one way, from line manager to down and too often only involves the feedback on results; ’the what’. It very rarely involves feedback on the methods of obtaining them, ’the how’. We all know that this is a problem, many recent examples have shown us that as much as achieving the results, it matters how they are reached. The 360 feedback tool has the power to shed some more light into the behaviours, the social skills, the actual people skills and how an employee is perceived by multiple stakeholder groups, even customers and external partners. And hence for the first timers, coaching with SARA model has become an effective best practise.

SARAH change model bridges shock to the future, helps to overcome loss. Those who are familiar with it, know that I very often refer to this, also many of times in the discussions I have with people who have lost their work. In relation to employment status change, being served notice unwanted and unexpectedly, the person quite naturally often follows the SARAH model when dealing with the change of their employment status.

S stands for SHOCK

A stands for ANGER

R for RESISTANCE

A for ACCEPTANCE

H for HEALING and HOPE

The process of dealing with change, loss or any bad news is very personal process, it is not linear as above and set-backs often occur, where the processing of the change suddenly takes a turn from acceptance back to anger. But in many situations where the news are unexpected, I often witness and in fact assist the person to go through all the 5 stages. Often people find comfort in processing the change knowingly through the SARAH model, understanding helps to focus on the next steps. Getting lost on the unfairness, loss of self-worth or bitterness is never good. Understanding SARAH almost always helps in the re-focusing.

In your experience, does SARAH help? Why do you think effective internal communication strategies are many of times so challenging? Would love to hear from you, get in touch and let me know your thoughts and feedback.

In the next part of this blog series

The difficulties of choosing the right redundancy selection criteria, the most common reasons why redundancies fail to be perceived as fair and few words about how to loose managerial credibility quickly.