While I think looking at the positive side always helps, however the context is what I am worried about, I’d prefer the employee realizes this himself rather than the terminator telling the employee, like I said in the post about people who got better opportunities because they lost their jobs, this is one patter on what life can offer, yet telling someone ” Sorry you have been fired, but you know what you can use the free time to do things you’ve not been able to do because of the job, like playing video games!”

For first point, most of times the decision is not justifiable because it is not based on any rationale and so it is not a correct decisions like many decisions that we see in business world, the manager himself may not be the decision maker, under this lousy economic climate, companies are under too much pressure to take proper decisions, they are in fact blinded by cost cutting, and think of big enterprises,how many times should they give justifications with the massive number of layoffs they are having, the justification may be pretty much self-explanatory “Recession!”, and as per the quote provided by a bank HR manager above, many companies use the recession to do what they couldn’t do before, like firing unwanted employees, cutting benefits, etc.

For third point, I couldn’t agree with you more, yes it is a business not a family, the problem is that most of people try to convince themselves that they work with family not colleagues, and they only wake up when they get screwed up by politics or destructive competition. For employees who spend decades in the same company it is very easy to think in that way, and it becomes too difficult to them to think otherwise, the bottom line is, you provide a service, you get paid, you do quality work and you get paid, at the end of the day if you are not of any value to a company, they wouldn’t hesitate to give you the axe!

We still need to work on our emotional intelligence to remove emotions and perceive things in their exact nature.

Thank you Pawel for sharing your views!

As per that banker that took the crises problem as an opportunity to fire people, this is very unfair.

I’d tell the employee myself better than others, or give some introductions about the current company standings before layoff people, it may help.

On the other hand, maybe getting a third party can help, but, the company’s management should be involved as well, at least it’s like an appreciation to the employee even if it looks so hard and cruel.

Thanks again Kareem

“Anybody who ever built an empire or changed the world sat where you are right now, and it’s because they sat there they were able to do it”

I think this is totally true.

Coming further if a manager can’t justify the decision in any reasonable way it means the decision itself was wrong and hiring the outsider to do the job won’t change it.

And I have pretty broad definition of reasonable argument: firing good performer because of the crisis is fine for me, same as letting a person go despite good work because of problems he has with others etc.

I don’t say fired person must automatically accept the explanation, pretty often she won’t, but if a manager can’t stand in front of a mirror and tell to himself “it was hard, but I know why I did this and I’m OK with the decision” something is really wrong.

Second, I once wrote a post titled how to fire people which goes through different ways of taking parts with an employee. Some of advices can be useful especially when there isn’t much economical pressure on the company and they can invest some time and money for example to find a more suitable place in organization for an employee or just give him some more time.

Third, personally I was fired and I believe everyone should be fired at least once in their lives. Really. It teaches you that it’s all about business after all. Despite opinions you may hear here and there that workplace is for someone like second family, like the guy you mentioned in the post, in vast majority of cases it is just a business. Not a family, not a charity. Just business. And even if work in the same place of 20 years one shouldn’t expect it is something more.