(Published August 31, 2009)
A lot of employees don't understand that job elimination is a headcount issue and not the elimination of their job duties. They assume that if their job is eliminated, that means that whatever they have been doing no longer needs to be done, and whatever their specific job duties have been will no longer be handled by anyone.
It's made even more confusing by a mistaken public perception that if you are laid off, the employer cannot hire anyone else for your position without first offering the job back to you. I don't know whether this is due to a misreading of the WARN Act (Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act) or what, but I can't tell you how many people have asked me if it isn't the law that their employer can't rehire for their position unless they've been called back to work first. Of course, the law doesn't say anything of the kind. Rehiring is entirely up to the employer, unless there is a legally binding contract or collective bargaining agreement that says otherwise.
When a laid-off employee has these misperceptions and hears through the grapevine that Joe or Sally or Sabrina is now handling their duties, they assume that their job was not eliminated at all and that there must be something fishy about their termination. "After all," they reason, "my work is still being done, so my job wasn't eliminated. And I wasn't offered my job back. And my employer [did/did not] contest unemployment, which means they must know they did something wrong. I should talk to a lawyer about a potential wrongful termination claim." (Note: I've found that both contesting and not contesting unemployment claims can be twisted this way, depending on the employee's perspective.)
And that brings up still another interesting misperception, which is that if unemployment benefits are granted, it's a sign that the employer was "wrong" to terminate. There are far too many people out there (I meet them frequently) who believe that receiving unemployment benefits is a sign that their termination was illegal.
What can we do about this in our HR role? Maybe we should make sure, when we give employees the bad news, that they understand the difference between a headcount reduction and the elimination of actual duties. It might not even be a bad idea to ask them to hand off anything that's unfinished to Joe or Sally or Sabrina, explaining that they will be handling the laid-off employee's duties from now on. At least they'd know up front. I think most people appreciate honesty.
I think it would also help if we told them that we would not contest unemployment (when we're not planning to). Employers should not contest unless there is really a valid reason to do so. Some places (I'm sure not any of your employers) automatically contest every unemployment claim and that just detracts from our credibility.
As far as rehiring goes, that's pretty situation-specific, but if you do regain funding or get that account back or for whatever reason are able to increase your headcount again, what can it hurt to give good ex-employees a chance at their jobs again? If you've kept good documentation during their employ, that should provide what you'd need in the event that that employee (you know, the one that you could hardly wait till the door was shut behind him before you started doing the Snoopy dance, you were so glad to see the end of him? The one that you had to hire extra space from Iron Mountain to fit in his file, he had so many write-ups? Yeah, that guy) comes complaining that you didn't rehire him, and, therefore, there must be some discrimination going on.
You can't please everyone….
Catherine Bannon is an HR consultant in Marshfield, MA (catherine.bannon@gmail.com). Bannon worked for 10 years in HR management before starting her consulting practice.
Home
