Someone in HR at Aviva Investors accidentally sent an email to everyone telling them they’d been fired.
:eek::smack::eek:
At a guess, I’d say that the HR department is now at least one person smaller…
Says a lot about the type of company that Aviva is, given that this was presumably directed at one employee.
Seems to be normal practice to dismiss employees by email - what a fucking arsehole outfit
Not only tactless, but stupid. To get this message when sitting alone at a computer would be an invitation for many people to damage data or create havoc electronically.
I’ve read about colleges telling applicants that they’ve been accepted when they haven’t.
Also, once I heard about a company that asked a credit company to give them two lists: one of potential customers with outstanding credit so they could be given a great credit offer, and one of people with credit so bad they shouldn’t even be allowed to pay with cash. They got the lists. Guess which group got the great credit offer?
Knowing how a lot of HR departments work, I’d say it’s probably time to hire 20 new HR drones to keep an eye on the rest. :smack:
I’d like to give Aviva at least a little benefit of the doubt here and assume that the email was intended as a follow up to an in-person notification to the fired employee that they were being let go. I agree with the other posters that it would be crazy to actually fire someone via email, which is why I hope this isn’t their only step in the termination process. I think its likely they have a checklist they follow in order to document that everything was done correctly, and that sending email notification is just part of it.
The mistake of cc’ing the whole company is still a big deal though obviously. I hope none of he “fired” employees reacted in ways the might now regret (telling off their boss, deleting/sabotaging their work, freaking out, etc.).
The HR person was probably promoted to manager.
When did Marley get a job at Aviva?
The late Borders once issued a press release about layoffs before informing the affected staff. People learned they had lost their jobs, on the radio, on the way to work that morning.
To fix this error, in the next round of layoffs, they not only didn’t make the info public - to prevent rumors spreading, they sorted people as they entered the building into different rooms, death-camp style.
God, that was a shitty place to work.
I find it pretty odd, though. I’ve never heard of someone getting a notification like this. Usually, for a big company like this, you get taken aside and in the meantime they shut off your computer access. If they didn’t do that and you were working out some term of duty, perhaps? Even then, it just strikes me as quite odd, instructing them to do things like hand in their badge… doesn’t the manager usually manage that so the person doesn’t just leave with whatever?
I once worked at a company where every single missive from HR was followed by a second correcting the first. I doubt we would’ve blinked at eye at getting fired like that. We’d all just wait for the correction. (And hope it wasn’t, “Sorry, we didn’t mean to send that e-mail until Friday. Carry on!”)
So the e-mail was only intended for one person? I can imagine this.
“You’re fired. Clean out your desk. Sincerely, HR.”
“Oops, our bad, that e-mail was sent by mistake. No one’s fired. Sincerely, HR.”
"Except you, John. You really are fired. Sorry for the mixup. Sincerely, HR.
PS, you got that twenty you owe me?"
I once worked for a publishing company. I don’t remember why, but the powers that be decided to eliminate several ad sales positions. Who wants to guess which happened first - corporate HR meeting with the about-to-be fired sales reps to tell them about the restructuring, or the mass mailing to our advertisers alerting them to the fact that that their reps had been canned and their accounts were being transferred?
Several reps found out when their account contacts called *them *to ask what the hell was going on.