It could depend upon the relationships between the management team and the employees. However, no matter how close you are to someone, they can respond differently under a stressful situation.
That young, perky blonde from marketing? Just deleted your entire sales database.
Your best friend from accounting? Just sent a mass e-mail to the rest of the company, (or god forbid client list) detailing all your dirty little secrets. It doesn’t even have to be true, the damage is done.
Maybe I just hear about these bad situations more often, because I’m in the business field (accounting), but it happens enough to scare management. Maybe they should have had better controls or a back-up of the databse, but often enough they don’t. I know the passwords and usernames of waaaaaaay too much confidential information for someone of my level. If I wanted to, I could destroy my bosses business, or at least set him back quite a bit.
We take classes in college just to learn about organizational behavior and employee psychology. I’m sure HR students take even more. Ideally we would be able to weed out the crazy people, but the people who do stupid stuff are either the quiet psycho who should never have been hired anyways, or the best friend of everyone on the team.
Very sorry you’re having to go through this, Jeff. It sucks. For what it’s worth, just from your attitude in this thread alone, you’re the kind of guy I want to work for. You value your employees as people. Lots of managers don’t.
Ah, you think I’m pissed? That’s one of those things that comes across poorly via text, I guess.
Honestly, I’m quite deliberate here. Long ago I just had enough of this “the good of the company is most important” attitude, and simply no longer stand for it. Especially in cases like this where I firmly believe it’s not only wrong, but that it’s not good for the company either – unless perhaps it’s a soulless company that had no worker loyalty to begin with, and nowhere but up for it’s morale to go.
Wasn’t that bad? We lost a state contract over it. The soon to be ex-employee called the IT Director and told him exactly what she thought of his “crap state” and his “crap workers” and then emailed him our internal emails showing the prices we got from our suppliers compared to the prices we charged.
Was there a lawsuit? Sure. Did we eventually get restitution from the employee? Not even close to the damage done.
Oh, please. I’m all for worker’s rights. That said, a good company that wants to be respectful will give you a good severance package. They don’t have to let you stick around. And yes, a person could do lasting, significant damage. Not everything is on “tape backup” and it’s possible to destroy backups as well. Employees trying to take clients/employees with them or sabotage client/employee relationships is not uncommon enough to be ignored.
I actually worked briefly in IT at law firm that decided to cut back four people out of a staff of around eighty. One of those four people managed to leave with a client list. As a direct result of that action, they ended up having to cut another twelve people next year due to the affect it had on business. Those twelve people were marched out by security. I was one of them.
These things do happen. Insisting that they are only theoreticals is foolish.
Exactly. The months that you are given as part of a severence package are the cushion the company is giving you to find a new job.
That’d be brutal. However, wWhy does that perky blonde have the access to delete the sales database and backups?
Your best friend from accounting? Just sent a mass e-mail to the rest of the company, (or god forbid client list) detailing all your dirty little secrets. It doesn’t even have to be true, the damage is done.
Instant layoffs don’t prevent this…
Maybe I just hear about these bad situations more often, because I’m in the business field (accounting), but it happens enough to scare management. Maybe they should have had better controls or a back-up of the databse, but often enough they don’t. I know the passwords and usernames of waaaaaaay too much confidential information for someone of my level. If I wanted to, I could destroy my bosses business, or at least set him back quite a bit.
Good point. I’ve definitely seen companies be sloppy about such basic things, and can see how knowing there is no protection could really scare you.
However, I would instead say that in such circumstances you should fix such fundamental problems. Databases after all can go bad for many other reasons… Moreover, since you know ahead of time you’ll be laying people off, you have ample opportunity to fix any issues first.
I think the point of a severence package is to minimize the amount of warning a company wants to give the laid off employee. I’ve seen both surprise layoffs and layoffs where the employees were given a couple weeks notice. A couple years ago our company laid off a bunch of developers and gave them 2 weeks notice and a severence package. A few of the developers were in the middle of a project and were offered a bonus to stay a few extra weeks if they finished their tasks on time.
People willing to do that will already have the client list, regardless of how quickly you lay them off. You think lawyers have trouble remembering who they were working with, and store nothing at home?
Exactly. The months that you are given as part of a severence package are the cushion the company is giving you to find a new job.
Months of severance? Not so common anymore. You do get unemployment insurance – but you paid for that out of your salary.
Where I work, if you are in a position to do major damage to the organization (you work in IT or HR or are directly involved in one of the major projects) you will not be given any notice of a layoff. If not (and probably 80-90% of the employees fit this), you are given a two week notice. If you are terminated for cause you are also not given any notice because either normally you will have been given several warnings or what you did was so damaging anyway.
Unleashing the fookin’ fury on your employer as you leave isn’t “rational”, but I can understand how someone who feels betrayed would do it. Lots of people actually believe that “we’re all a team working together!” stuff and don’t take it too well when their team ejects them from the family, deserved or not.
I don’t even think you have to go that far. Losing your job is traumatic and in the heat of the moment, anger can be a powerful force. People can behave in ways that are completely out of character.
When I got laid off, I think the team took the news worse than I did. They went apeshit yelling about how management was taking away the people they needed to get the project done. I went home and played Forza 2.
It would certainly be harder to obtain the exclusive vender/supplier price information without being employed at the company wouldn’t it? I mean, it’s sort of hard to get those prices without a way to physically get into the building, yes? I guess she could’ve broken in overnight and done her deed, but I imagine building security might’ve gotten to her first.
I’m not even sure what you’re arguing anymore. Yes, it sucks to get fired. It sucks to have to fire people. It really sucks that some people want revenge on the employer that fires them, but it does happen and it’s not some crazy “what-if” scenario from Harry Turtledove. A nice severance package helps to mitigate some of the shock, but I’d wager that unless you’re getting a Golden Parachute payout, anyone will harbor some bitterness over the firing.
Companies have an obligation for the safety and security of their employees. You know, the ones that aren’t getting terminated.
It actually wasn’t a lawyer. Though it should be noted that if it was a lawyer, he mighta known his clients, but he wouldn’t have known everyone else’s.
I’m trying to understand why being given two weeks’ notice is so important to you, Jasper? Or rather, to the employee. Given a decent severance package, there isn’t any real financial benefit, aside from maybe another couple weeks’ worth of insurance before having to find your own. Is it to cushion the blow psychologically? I can’t think of anything more pointless than coming in to work every day to help out a company that just laid me off. Just how much websurfing could I do in two weeks, anyway? I’d rather have the two weeks to go blow off some steam or visit family or whatever before starting the job hunt.
It’s sometimes hard to tell if a person will turn psycho when laid off. We’ve had seemingly normal people threaten managers when let go. We’ve had people who were perfectly normal decent people and good workers who, when laid off, take our entire customer list, internal business docs, etc. and mail them out to other companies asking what sort of money they can get for the info (using their company address, it’s amazing how stupid seemingly smart people can be sometimes). That’s grand larceny right there (though good luck getting the cops or any district attorney to do anything about someone stealing company secrets unless you personally know someone in law enforcement). Heck, in my experience more people send loads of confidential information to their personal email addresses the second they know they are gone than don’t.
To be a benevolent company you give a good severance package. You don’t let a dead man walk around your office with complete access to everything for a week, or even a minute if you can help it. That’s just stupid.
Though I’ve never done this myself, the correct answer to even “let me get my personal stuff off the computer” should be “sorry, you shouldn’t have had personal stuff on your computer”. Since some 70% of the time, “let me get my personal stuff off my computer” actually means “let me email myself everything I can grab”. Instead I usually let people do what they want, I just monitor their emails and communications and kill anything confidential they try to send out, but since it happens with such regularity, I’m always considering the proper answer of “no”.
You’re making foolish assumptions. I treat my employees incredibly well. Flexible hours. Telecommuting when possible. I’m very flexible to family needs as long as people are productive. I allow them to collaborate on work schedules allowing developers a say in which specific projects or portions they get assigned to keep them interested in their work. I allow everyone to have a say in projects and priorities. I’ve been told over and over again by employees that I’ve been their favorite boss ever since I treat them as human beings and not as cogs in a machine. One time when I had to lay a guy off, I had already lined up an interview with an associate of mine for a job that actually turned out to pay better (something that also helped my angst about having to lay off a really competent guy that I had only hired some 8 months prior).
Still, I’m not going to let a guy who knows he has been canned walk around the office with full access to everything. I’ll give him six weeks of severance if I can, but seriously, giving people the opportunity to react badly to the news is just plain stupid. Especially salespeople, just about every one of them mails confidential contact info to themselves when fired.
