Low hanging *OUCH* fruit

Some of you job seekers may have heard about this letter – it has been huge news on the recruiter blogsphere, and others (thanks to FunnyBusiness for the pic!). I think it is kind of low hanging fruit but fun all the same. Go read the letter – it is inspirational.

For anyone that has been pinkslipped, and that’s a ton of people, this is a slap in the face. It just goes to show, your employer DOES NOT care about you. They want you to bring value, and they will pay you a fair wage for that value. But when it is time to cut the relationship, the most you can expect from anyone is a list like this. If you are lucky, perhaps they’ll laminate it.

Let me jump on the bandwagon this link, btw, is great – salt on an open wound – here is my advice to any company that does NOT want to look as lame as Northwest on this one:

  1. Um… read the memo before you stamp your approval – that is probably a big reason why people get laid off in the first place – not enough attention to detail. Of course, I doubt a list this big would qualify as small print. (Obviously NW didn’t read the memo, but the company it outsourced to said – get this – they outsourced it also, and claim they didn’t read it either!)
  2. Get an outplacement firm to handle this stuff for you. My heavens, your business is not to put people out on their butts – so if you have to do it get help! There are plenty outplacement firms, big and small – local and national! Oh yeah… since you have a hard time looking into things here are some links for you: DBM (who says that companies that use real services like this are 3 times more likely to maintain stock price), LHH, and Spherion (yes, the do a ton of outplacement)… I imagine you can go find some more on your own.
  3. If you can’t afford outplacement (kind of ironic to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars, very little of which will end up in the ex-employees pockets) then do this – e-mail me (jason -at- JibberJobber.com) and I’ll get you a group discount! How’s that? I bet paying for premium access to give your employees a real job tool like JibberJobber will be easier on the PR-nightmare than giving them a list fit for — NO ONE! And at least you are emplowering them to be prepared for stuff like this in the future.
  4. Be honest with your entire company and let them know that you love them but will terminate them when you need to. Encourage them to make other relationships – empowering your employees to strengthen their relationships inside and outside of the industry should make them more valuable to you…. here’s a great write-up on this concept by Phil801 – although I think this would scare most corporate settings and just be “common sense” for smaller companies. Note that company is now defunct and Phil and team are getting to prove how clever they really are.

That’s it folks. Ouch to Northwest. I almost wish I were there to read the memo alongside them and see their reactions in person. I wonder if the people that are responsible for this still have their jobs?


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