The Way Out Doesn't Have To Be So Hard
by Richard Galbreath, SPHR
(309) 664-7741
You have to fire an employee. No one likes to do it. You know that it isn’t a good time to get a job today. You are concerned about unemployment costs, employee morale, customer relations and potential legal involvement.
You only have two good choices to reduce these concerns. The first is to keep the employee. This is often not a good choice and will cost you more in the long run. The second is to provide the employee with outplacement assistance.
Outplacement assistance is specifically designed to reduce the amount of time a person in career transition is unemployed, saving you money. Outplacement also gets people focused forward. This means that they think less about calling an attorney, filing an EEOC or other claim. I tell those in outplacement "every second you spend dealing with the past is lost to the future." As a result, those in outplacement don't file claims as often, don't stir the pot with your remaining employees and don't cause you problems with your customers. That saves you a lot of money and headaches. Providing outplacement is also the moral, enlightened, caring thing to do.
If this is the case, why don't more companies provide employees with outplacement? The primary reason is that they don't know that such a service exists. This article should fix that - please send it to your friends. The second reason is that many people think that outplacement is expensive. Actually, it isn't. The reduction in unemployment payments just by themselves often more than pays the total cost of outplacement. The fact that you avoid all the other costs, and that helping people in career transition is the right thing to do, is just gravy.
I can't tell you how many times I've talked to an executive about outplacement and found that they really didn't care about helping those in career transition. Inevitably, they get fired themselves at some point and experience that lost feeling, going all on their own, not knowing that there is a better way to find the next job. Without fail, the next time I talk to them, they offer their new company's employees outplacement when the need arises.
What goes around, comes around. Help people transition well if for no other reason than that (and I hope you will find better reason), and you may be treated in the same way when its your turn.
Rick Galbreath, SPHR, is president of Performance Growth Partners Inc., a full service organizational improvement firm specializing in strategic planning, meeting facilitation, HR audits, corporate outplacement services, customer service assessments, customer service training, supervisory training, employee surveys, employee handbooks, teambuilding programs and training, on-call and project based HR consulting services, employee retention programs, executive coaching, manufacturing process and operations improvement consulting, employee retention, performance improvement programs, interim executive placement, keynote addresses, business turnaround consulting, and a wide range of other services. Contact PGPi at (309) 664-7741 or e-mail rick@performtogrow.com
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