Many, or perhaps most, of us have suffered through a round of layoffs and have found ourselves suddenly unemployed. Often these layoffs are handled in a clumsy and uncaring way. One common tactic is to call the victim into the manager’s office, lay him or her off, and then have security escort him out of the building. Often the company takes pains to make sure the fired employees have no chance to talk to any of their colleagues.
The Register has a wonderful and deeply satisfying story of how this tactic blew up in the face of one unlucky company. I won’t spoil it by giving you the details; it’s short and you really should read it. The take away is how a failure to treat people going through a difficult transition with sympathy and understanding ended up costing the company £100,000.
Sometimes it really is necessary for companies to lay off personnel but that’s no excuse to be jerks about it. It’s also no reason to ignore best practices.