A few months ago I was dismissed from my job of 2+ years for no reason. They veiled it as a ‘restructuring’ that affected no other employee but me. When asked for the motivating factors behind the restructuring, management was evasive. I was told it was not performance related.
Is it wrong of me to feel like I am owed a legit reason here? Lying to me and providing no feedback is not truthful, and while it might be liability-limiting, I find the dishonesty unprofessional.
If I am going to move forward and learn to conduct myself better in future jobs, I rely on past employers to provide feedback to help prevent repeating the same mistakes. My request for an exit interview was denied. My request for a follow-up with my manager was denied. My request for a letter of recommendation and a reference was denied. The most they would give me is a confirmation of employment. Yet, they doggedly maintain I did nothing wrong.
I qualify for unemployment, but am not eligible for legal recourse in my province, so I am not looking for that… Just wondering if this is standard practice. I still talk to a lot of people from this workplace and my dismissal left everyone baffled. Gossip hasn’t trickled down to the rank and file, so whoever orchestrated it was surgical about it.
Anyways, this is a debate forum, not about me… So I would ask the question of whether employers have an ethical obligation to provide employees with honest feedback upon termination?
“No reason, just restructuring, just bad luck.” = No recourse.
“There is a reason, it’s your fault, you did X.” = How many times? Have progressive disciplinary practices been followed? Is it explicitly mentioned in the contract or handbook? Has anyone else done that before? What happened to them? Have I been written up for that or anything else?
No employer will give you an honest reason unless they’re required to and it’s iron clad. The whole point of right to work laws is to allow employers to fire people for petty or illegal reasons and claim it’s for no reason at all.
I’m guessing you’re based in the US so take this all with a grain of salt as I’ve never worked there…
I’m not surprised that your request for an exit interview was denied. It sounds like you requested the interview in order to understand why your role was made redundant. That’s not the purpose of exit interviews, which are done (a) so that the company has a better idea of the reasons why people are leaving or (b) so that the company can get as much knowledge/information out of you before you go.
There definitely seems to be something unethical around your dismissal but I doubt there’s anything actionable. I work in a global company and whenever there are redundancies (either voluntary or compulsory), there is a huge amount of effort put in to explain the reasons behind the decisions.
I can completely understand this whole situation preying on your mind. My only advice would be to accept that (a) something shitty has happened to you, and (b) you’ll probably never find out the reasons why. You can’t do anything with that, so shift your focus to your future (which I’m sure you already have).
He mentions “legal recourse in [his] province.” USAnians would say state.
That being said, if their labor laws are similar to US “employment at will” then the company has no legal requirement to tell the worked why they were let go if the employee’s contract does not require termination for “just cause.”
Of course anyone would WANT to know why they were dismissed, but satisfying your curiosity is of no value to your previous employee and you quite possibly could use the information against them. It also seems to be a common corporate policy these days to prohibit letters of recommendation as well, regardless of your performance. I suppose if they write you a glowing letter, you could use that in a termination suit: see, they admitted right here I did a fabulous job, you could say.
The company has either terminated you for a reason that is legally acceptable or one that isn’t. If it’s the latter, not telling you the reason is obvious and the least of the ethical problems. But if it is the former, I still cannot fault the employer who does not want to risk having to pay enormous sums of money and waste gobs of time on legally defending their actions.
I hope you do get a reason that satisfies you and I agree that you deserve one, but your treatment seems like the typical CYA corporate policy in the US these days, not a lack of professionalism, so maybe this has spread to Canada.
Not sure where you are getting that from. Seems to me like the OP has a legitimate question. It must be terribly bewildering to be let go from a job with zero explanation and to be stonewalled when you try to get one.
Ethically, I think the human beings at the company ought to wrack their brains figuring out “how can we give the OP useful feedback that will help him/her have a successful employment experience in the future, without getting us into trouble and without hurting his/her feelings?” Who knows - maybe they asked themselves that question and couldn’t come up with an answer. Or maybe they just didn’t care.
The company doesn’t want to give you anything to push back against.
Although it’s not that unusual for a company to refuse to do references. I was told (back when I was a manager) not to give anything except start date, end date, and job title. It isn’t universal - I have my current job partly because of what my previous boss said about me - but a company can leave itself open legally if they either recommend, or don’t recommend, an employee.
Let’s say that they did lie about the reason for firing you. It was something that you did or didn’t do. In that case you just dodged a bullet. If they fired you for cause, that might make getting another job much more difficult. While it would be very good to know what went wrong so that you could make changes, you might figure it out with a little introspection. Are you still on good terms with any former coworkers? Maybe talk to them off the record.
I wouldn’t push it too far. Just make sure that they will give any future employers a good reference and move on.
Even in a restructuring and downsizing, unless you are unique and the only one that does what you do in your organization, your past performance will definitely come into play when it comes to decide who gets to go. Companies don’t draw rocks out of bag to determine who should be laid off. They definitely keep the best performers or in some cases if performance differences are marginal, they may keep the lowest paid.
It may literally have nothing to do with you. Like, someone wants to hire someone else’s brother-in-law, so they restructure your job away, and create another one in a few months. You will likely never know.
(S)he worked there for over two years and is abruptly fired. It costs the employer $$ to fire without cause (at least in the US it does, as far as UC). Surely the OP has some thoughts as to motivation.
My experience in getting restructured to the curb is that somebody in management, marketing or planning screwed up and they don’t have the budget for as many people as they have on staff. Rather than dumping the person who screwed up and using that as incentive to the remaining people on that team to not screw up similarly in the future, they’re dumping somebody who can keep making money for the company and possibly bail them out. Their loss.
You don’t want them to make up a reason for letting you go. In future job interviews, you will have no way to prove why you were laid off, and the new company isn’t going to contact the old company and ask them about it. “Restructuring” is a perfectly valid reason to have been laid off, and your future employers won’t hold it against you. “Failure to bill time properly or in a timely fashion on a consistent basis” will be held against you in future job interviews. Also, if you improvise in that future interview and say you have no idea why they laid you off, that will not look so good, so just say “Restructuring of the company,” shrug, and move on.
Happened to me four years ago. I’d worked for the company for just over three years, and then my boss (who had hired me) was let go. Three months later, I was fired. No real reason given - vague statements about a new direction.
Two months after that, the other person my boss had hired was let go as well. So it was likely an overall disagreement with the way my boss had been structuring his department.
The nice thing is, I know they’ve cycled through at least three people in my old position in the past four years, and none of them lasted longer than six months. I don’t keep in touch much any more with those co-workers, but last I heard they were outsourcing a lot of the work and farming some out to various internal folks. Meanwhile, I got a job with a larger company (different industry, but doing the same work). The hours are MUCH more manageable, the pay and benefits are better, and everyone here seems to think I’m doing a good job. It was a stressful six weeks while I looked for work, but in retrospect it was worth it.
Similarly, you interview for a job and don’t get it so you ask for some feedback. I think twice EVER I got something other than, “you were just not a good fit” in that boilerplate monotone.
Indeed. Everytime I have been ‘let go’ or watched other people get laid off, it was obvious to everyone WHY it was happening. Now, it could be some internal politics, in which case you are not getting any feedback because the feedback is “Bob screwed the budget and someone got cut”, but even then Bob probably has a list in his head about who he’s going to cut next if he has to at any given time.
Having been on both sides of the desk in those situations, sometimes there isn’t much feedback to give. You have two candidates, they’re both proficient in the skills needed, but you can only hire one so you hire the one you got along with better. Not much to it other than that.
There is absolutely zero upside for a company to disclose any information in your situation and all potential downside. I would never expect it. A company behaving in the way you describe is neither ethical nor unethical.
If you are referring to unemployment that cost is trivial to potential lawsuits. As an employer I’d rather pay everyone terminated an amount based on tenure in exchange for an agreement they won’t sue and just be done with it. I’ve tried to get that implemented but at some places that’s only done for a certain level of employee. Others get unemployment and we roll the dice on lawsuits.
You know, this policy is pathological. In no way does it improve the labor pool or the quality of employees that companies get to hire by stonewalling like this.
I suspect the corporations of each other are collectively screwing each other over with this policy, but it’s a case of tragedy of the commons, where each corporation gains something individually by remaining silent (protection from torts) but dirties the labor pool as a result of their actions.