I've always hated the professional term "let go", which basically is a mild term for getting fired. It's sounds as if when a person is let go, the company is letting a bird out of a cage. Can you imagine if Donald Trump said, "you're let go"? First of all it would be confusing to the person, who would wonder where they were going, and secondly it wouldn't have the same emotional effect on the viewing audience as "you're fired!" Why do companies make it sound like they're letting a zoo animal loose in the wild?
"You've been trapped so long in this dead end job that we are going to set you free! Run free! Run and be free!"
But that's really not what happens when you're let go, in fact the company never really lets you go because the stigma of being laid off or fired stays with you the rest of your life. Not for a few weeks, but for the REST OF YOUR LIFE. You think about it day and night and why it happened. What did you do wrong or what did they do wrong? Or "why did those bastards just let me go?" The term "let go" is just something people created to soften the blow but in reality it's a lie management tells themselves so they can sleep better at night. As a manager you never let someone go, you fire them.
However if you ever are let go, there are always alternatives but for some reason management doesn't see the need to pursue them, and that's pretty LAME. If you were let go recently here are 5 very poor reasons why:
"We're restructuring our work force"- I could never figure this one out, especially when it happened to me years ago. My manager was seriously upset that she had to fire me, but all I cared about was if I was getting any severance. The conversation went something like this:
"I can't believe I have to do this. I've never let someone go over something other than performance issues. I'm so sorry.", she looked like she was about to cry.
"Well I know it's not performance because I'm at 144% to quota for the last 3 months and trending towards President's Club.", I said a little proud and a little bitter.
"I know that's what makes this so hard. We had to eliminate your territory, and we got rid of 10 reps across the country. I'm so sorry."
"Well, you can't be too sorry, otherwise you wouldn't be letting me go. Hey at least they're not getting rid of Regional Managers.", I said, and then added, "Yet." and I started to laugh.
"How can you joke at a time like this. I feel terrible.", she said again and I truly believe she was sad.
"What choice do I have? I have to deal with it somehow. Besides, I'm a good rep. I can find another job easily, and all I care about is if I get a severance package. Do I get a severance package?"
"Yep 3 months. What are you going to do?"
" I don't know this has never happened to me before. Go find another job I guess. Don't worry I'll be fine. I've always wanted a 3 month vacation.", I said and smiled so she would feel better.
"I'll be sure to right you a letter of recommendation. Since you are leading the region right now in sales it's the least I can do."
At this point what I should have said is, "The least you can do is fire the under performing reps and keep me!", but instead what I said was, "Thanks. I appreciate it, and don't worry I'll be fine." What a wimp! And what a terrible excuse for letting me go. I found out later she fired me because she knew I was the strongest rep and would survive the lay off. Uh...golly gee, thanks for the endorsement?
We Need To Cut Costs - I always find this reason for firing someone slightly amusing because if corporations really wanted to cut costs, and I mean CONSIDERABLY, shareholders should start demanding that CEO's and managers take substantial pay cuts. It seems that they always cut the work force rather than their expense accounts or executive pay. Once I was asked to fire 3 employees with over 30 years experience combined because "we needed to cut costs". The conversation went something like this:
My new GM asked me, "We're behind on our profit numbers who can we cut to make that last 2%?"
"Are you serious? You want to fire someone just so you can make a number?"
"Yes I want you to fire someone. We can always hire them back in few months. It's just a production partner anyway. I can train anybody to do that job."
"Oh okay, so first of all, that's insulting to all our production partners and how does that makes it alright to sack someone? Who do you suggest I fire?"
"Yolanda. She's a pain in the butt and she makes the most money. I think we should fire her and the other two supervisors. We can make our numbers in last quarter if we do that."
"Yolanda! My best employee and one of the best employees we have. And the other two leads! The whole production team will fall apart. Sorry the answer is NO."
"You can't say NO to me! You're such a friggin cowboy you know that! If I don't make that number I may be out of a job, and you might be out of a job. Is that what you want?"
"No I don't want anyone to lose their job, including you. I will restructure the work schedule to make up the 2% but I'm not firing anyone, and if we don't hit our number than fire my ass if you want to fire anyone. I'm not a 40 year old production partner with 4 mouths to feed."
"I'm gonna hold you to that number cowboy. You better come through.", he said with slight twang in his voice as he pointed his finger at me. I just laughed, even thought inside my stomach was turning.
"I'll hit it.", as I said this, I wondered what to tell my wife I just said to my boss when I got home. Uggh!
Needless to say I did hit the number, and there was no need to fire anyone. If they tell you that you were let go because they are cutting costs, that could be total bulls**t. If they want to really save money, executives should fire themselves, or take a pay cut.
"Your Position Was Eliminated" - Okay, I just had a friend who was let go because they "eliminated" her position. What the company did was move her position and change the title so a personal friend of the CEO's sister could be hired. She was doing an outstanding job, but the CEO wanted his little friend to work with his sister, so they eliminated her position...politics.
The same thing happened to a 15 year veteran and dear friend in the laundry business. He was the consummate partner and the company decided after 15 years and LEADING THE COUNTRY IN GROWTH AND PROFIT, that they didn't need him anymore. His branch was too small to need a manager so they eliminated his position, and didn't even offer him a different one. You mean to tell me, they couldn't find a position for a guy who basically bled the company colors. WTF?
Eliminating your position means essentially your company is eliminating you. If they really wanted to keep you on board, they would find another position for you. Sad but true.
We're Downsizing - I have many friends who have been laid off for exactly this reason. In fact, a friend who worked for a division of Johnson and Johnson described her experience of being let go right in the middle of a regional meeting.
She was sitting in the meeting with a bunch of other reps when an HR person for the company came in and grabbed her, and told her to pick up her things. How embarrassing first of all, and secondly, they couldn't wait until the meeting was over to let her go?!!! She was made to feel like she did something wrong, which she didn't, and it made her look bad in front of her peers. She said she would never get over the emotional scars it left on her, and it would take years for them "heal".
Lay offs like this occur in medical sales all the time, but it's because healthcare companies often over saturate a market with reps, especially when they're promoting a new device or a drug, and when they don't meet projections, they start firing reps. Unfortunately it's common place in healthcare sales, but it doesn't need to be, if the product is marketed correctly and forecasting is done right. I know that Blitzkrieg marketing works but at the expense of people's jobs and their lives? Branding can be done in other ways rather than throwing money and sale reps at the issue.
If companies really want to avoid downsizing they should not over extend themselves....but that will never happen.
We're Outsourcing Your Department Overseas - I heard from a friend they were eliminating her department at her company and outsourcing it to somewhere in Asia. I thought to myself, that's just another way to cut costs, but not necessarily improve efficiency or customer retention. It's a tiny bandage on a large wound. I think that corporations see cheap labor as an easy alternative to help cut costs and so they take the easy route. But what do they do when wages in that new country increase? Outsource the jobs to another, cheaper country? They need to look internally at their own corporate overhead. CEO's spend more time focusing on cheap labor rather than expensive corporate overhead, especially in America where CEO's are paid on average more any other country in the world. There are disputes over how much more, but the United States still has the best paid executives worldwide. If executives wanted to save money and reduce redundancies than might want to consider lowering executive compensation across the board in order to keep US citizens employed. It's good for the economy and it's good for business...but not good for executives, and so that will never happen.
If you are ever laid off there are a few things you need to remember that I will cover in a companion post to this one:
1. It's not your fault
2. It's not your fault
3. It's not your fault
Now these are just a few reasons why you were "let go", but there are many more, and sometimes the people in charge really have no choice. The company might be losing money and jobs need to be cut in order to keep the business afloat. However, as a former corporate employee and corporate manager, I only urge that people in the "C" suite look at all the alternatives before making the decision to lay people off. Remember that 40 million families are living paycheck to paycheck...now sleep on that.
-M
No comments:
Post a Comment