How To Treat Your Layoff Victims Like Humans

Applause all around for Human Resource Executive Online’s story about the right way to communicate bad news to your employees.

Suggested are all common-sense ideas, like “give people as much notice as possible so they can adjust their budgets,” and “don’t try to put a positive spin on bad news, but don’t be gloomy either.”

Also worth pointing out is that cutting pay is obviously less drastic than layoffs, but in a company that has constantly tied pay to performance by saying things like “You deserve a raise because you work so hard for the company,” cutting pay feels like a devaluation of the worker. Be careful with this, says HRE Online.

Anyway. The key bit, we think, is here:
“Silence communicates, too. In a time of crisis, people need more candid information, not less.”

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