Difficult decision to make 3

[MedicineEng]

Dear All:
I might be confronted to a quite difficult situation somewhere in the future and I would like to ear your views about this.
My company is reducing staff and my department is not excluded from that reduction. I have been reducing staff by firing incompetent/non-adapted staff or by not replacing the ones that leave. Since the ones that I fired the decision was done based on performance and eventualy they would be fired anyway, I didn't have any problem with my sleep. But now we are looking to positions that are eventually not needed and/or do not justify a full time position and/or can be outsourced.
I have 2 persons in that situation and eventually I have to release one (my boss mentioned both of them, but I am struggling to keep one), but this is has been quite fight inside my brain.
Some background on these 2 persons:
One is a man and other is a woman;
Both are low specialized workers easily replaced, and clearly excedent for the ammount of work needed for that section;
Both are with us for many years (over 10);
Both are already well over 40;
The woman has 3 kids and she is the only one that takes money home;
The man has 4 or 5 kids (eventualy some already working)but at least 1 is still a child. He is immigrant and recently finally he got authorization to bring his wife and the youngest daughter to the country;
Now, who should I release?
If I look to the company's interests, and since the man sometimes helps in other works not directly connected to his functions, I should release the woman;
If I look for the social environment, the woman is the only income for his family and I know that for the man is easier to find a job even in the civil construction, that has been booming around here.
But then, will I keep the least "skilled" staff and release the "better" one? The commas are just because this is non-skilled labour so their job quality in the position is basically the same.
The things have been more calm now, but I know that sooner or later my boss will come back to this issue.
What would you do?

 

[monkeydog]

Severence for a year?!?!?!
Why would you even worry about their home life/breadwinning?

Where do I have to go to get a 1 year severence package?

 

[Zapster]

-The fact that I mentioned the gender and the age of the persons doesn't imply any type of discrimination. Is just to let you understand some of the constraints that I have. And discrimination aside, it is (at least for me) easier to release a young man that I know that has more probabilities to get a job than a older woman that is the only income of his family;

Actions can be rationalized for most any type of discrimination. In this case basing your decision on age or sex is every bit as unpalatable as basing it on race or religion.

 

[MedicineEng]

Monkeydog:
You have to come to this country and earn what they earn per year (that most probably is what you earn in a month)...The maximum severance by the law is 1 year salary.

Zapster:
If you see in my words any discrimination, so be it. It is not my intention to have any discrimination based on gender or age. It is solely yo explain better the situation. I believe that all persons that have to take decisions like this one, put all these facts into consideration and doesn't have anything to do with discrimination.

Can you fire without a blink of an eye a person that you know that it will have immense difficulty to get a new job, in a country where social security is virtually inexistent and that he (she) is the only income for his (her) family?
And the quesiton of the gender comes in the sense that even with all the non discrimination laws that are (or not) enforced, the fact is that men can easily get a new job than women. This is reality.

 

[epoisses]

Yep... it's easy to fire people, as long as you don't look in their eyes... or in their wallets...

To all managers or would-be managers who consider any sub-par employee (that happens to be 50% of them) a slacker that should be eliminated asap...
Have you ever told these people what you expect from them in clear and measurable terms? (already before you hired them?) Have you ever compared their actual performance with those requirements, discussed on how to improve and seriously followed up on that? Have you provided them with the training they needed?
If any of the answers is no then have a good look in the eyes of the person you are firing and see who is the first to look away.

 

[brokensoul]

I am new graduate and I would prefer to know that my job was on the chopping block and when i could expect the desicion to be made rather than be leftin the dark and be told on friday that i should not bother coming in on monday. It would give me the opportunity to do some interveiws and line up a new job if necessary. This, especially if i was the only bread winner for the family, would the only morally and ethically fair thing to do.

I dont like that the corprate sector has a tendency to not be forthcoming with information concering things like job security or fair pay.


This sadly may mean that i am never allowed into upper management.

BSK

 

[kontiki99]

brokensoul

Given the threat of workplace violence or vandalism, I believe the norm is to not give people time in the workplace to stew about loosing their job.

Over the past 4 years I have witnessed two telling events.

One layoff everyone knew was coming soon, the actual day came unannounced. People were met at their cubes when they came in and escorted off the premises. Their personal belongings were set to them. They received two weeks additional pay on top of their severance in lieu of their two weeks notice.

In a second event, someone in another group working in our area gave his boss two weeks notice. She wound up escorting him off the base that morning. I understood it had to do with his new position with a company that was a potential competitor.

For those reasons, I was 100% prepared to leave the very minute I gave my two weeks notice with my previous employer. I had no personal items in my work area. My project notes were updated ready for turnover. I also had made the arrangements to start the move in 3 weeks to avoid loosing income over the transition.

I felt bad about not being able to give my boss more notice, but the decisions to escort someone off the premises ASAP might have been in the hands of a corporate security person.

As a side note, I always try to maintain useful project notebooks and pass down records, just in case.

It’s a rule of low risk project management. I do believe my insentience on maintaining good a project notebook, sometimes caused my boss to believe my leaving was imminent.

Not the case at all. I did not decide to go until they announced an across the board pay cut.

 

[MedicineEng]

brokensoul:
The corporate rules is to fire immediately and pay in money the equivalent to the advance notice. The reason is the one that was already stated.

I think that the issue is that we are seeing this issue with "engineer's" eyes, so a lay off is bad, but with the set of skills that was given to us derived from the formal education that we had the luck or made the effort to have we are better prepared to get ourselves out of the mud, if needed.
The issue is that we are speaking about low specialized, virtually non formally educated staff that barely know to write and read.

 

[soiledup]

Do a 'The Apprentice' style elemination round. You could be 'Donald Trump' and sit them both around a table then get them to argue why each should stay. Then after this cruel and unusal style of punishment - just point your finger at one and yell 'you're fired' giving no reasons.

(Of course I'm joking guys,,)

 

[redgdon]

Simple, your company is reducing staff to cut costs.

Which one is the highest cost to the company?

One thing I would keep in mind is this, if the person remaing is your only subordinate, look for a new job.

 

[AggieYank]

Retain the employee who adds the most to the company. Be 100% honest with the employee you are going to let go. It sounds like you have a little time before your boss comes back and tells you to let the other one go. What if you told that person now so as to give that person a heads up that their time is up, so they have a month or two to look for a job?

 

[epoisses]

MedicineEng wrote:
"Can you fire without a blink of an eye a person that you know that it will have immense difficulty to get a new job, in a country where social security is virtually inexistent and that he (she) is the only income for his (her) family?
And the quesiton of the gender comes in the sense that even with all the non discrimination laws that are (or not) enforced, the fact is that men can easily get a new job than women. This is reality."

Given this context, sure you can retain the employee that adds most to the company. If this happens to be the men, then at least be sincere and make sure you throw all those glossy "social responsibility" brochures in the shredder, because they would be seriously outdated after you fired the woman!

 

[jmw]

MedicineEng, you admit there is little to justify even keeping one and even without the lay-offs, they would surely be living on borrowed time.

Management has a pretty good idea of the desired headcount and the jobs (not necessarily people) they want to retain.
What they have done is allow you some "A" or "B" choices and this particular case doesn't appear to be an "either/or" but "both".

If you can't demonstrate a genuine need then you are fighting a lost cause and it is best to make the cut quick and clean for the empoyee's sakes.

You say some of the jobs are going to outsourcing, so are you able to get either or both taken on with the outsource provider? or is that the problem?

If there was a genuine capability to retain one job then you might be justified in concerning yourself with their personal circumstances but in this case you may just be making a tough decision harder.

From the way this is reported to us, this is a staged firing sequence and I might wonder if you have done it in the right order?
I would think it might be better to make the difficult fires first (while you have the nerve for it) and to give the good guys first pick in the job market. I'd save the brown-nosers, the dead beats and slackers till last and gain some perspective.
I don't know what anyone else thinks.

JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[monkeydog]

MedicineEng,
It's been 2 weeks since your last entry.
Are you still there?
What happened?

 

[MedicineEng]

Dear All:
I am still here and still have my job...
Thanks a lot for your replies and interest in this.
Right now the things are more calm and the frenzy for outsourcing has relaxed a little bit.
I am sure that it will come back.
I am still evaluating the situation but I will have to close my ears to emotion and follow the rational thing to do, whatever painful (to me and the involved parties) it might be.