When Employment Ends: Layoffs, Job Termination, Firing, Resignations

Buyouts are a common method for reducing the number and cost of employees. In a buyout, the employer offers some employees or all employees the opportunity to receive a large severance package in return for leaving their employment.

Before you decide to fire your difficult employee, here are 10 tips that tell you how to approach dealing with difficult people at work.

When an employee resigns, there are steps an employer should take, including an exit interview, to determine why you are losing the employee. Find out more steps in handling an employee resignation.

Firing an employee can be a dirty job, but the IT department must help do it. It is necessary to involve IT in the employee termination process because a former employee who still has access to a company's network and proprietary corporate data is a security threat. Find out why and how the IT department needs to be involved in the termination of employees.

Employees leave your organization for good and bad reasons. On the positive side, they find new opportunities, go back to school, retire or land their dream job. Less positively, they are fired for poor performance or poor attendance or experience a layoff because of a business downturn. In each instance, you need an employment termination...

The decision to terminate an individual’s employment carries with it the risk of a possible legal challenge. Depending upon an employer’s policies or whether an employee has an employment contract, an employee may, for example, have a breach of contract or “wrongful discharge” claim. Learn the right questions to ask before you terminate an...

Do you need to fire an employee? These are the legal and the ethical steps that you will want to take when you fire employees. You need to ensure that your process is above reproach. Here's how.

Managers cite firing employees as the job they most hate to do. Sometimes, terminating a staff person’s employment is the best step to take for your organization. Sometimes terminating a person’s employment is the kindest action you can take for the person. In some circumstances, firing an employee is an immediate necessity for the safety and...

Exit interviews are one of the best ways to get true and honest feedback from employees. The downside is that it takes time to build up a significant amount of data from exit interviews. Increasing your participation rate can help you get greater amounts of actionable information faster from your exit interviews.

Informational interviews allow people who are interested in a particular career field, job, company, or industry to interview (talk with) a person who is currently, successfully employed in a job in their field of interest. People who request informational interviews want to know about the job, career, industry or company from the perspective of...

Checking job or employment references is time-consuming and frequently unsatisfactory, as many employers, despite recent legislation, refuse to offer more than dates of employment, salary history and job title. Here is the format I use to check references. Take a look; it provides a format for reference checking that you'll find helpful.

Have you experienced a job loss through a layoff or downsizing? Job loss and a job search are painful and upsetting for most people. Additionally, parents must tell family members about the job loss and mitigate their fears about the family, the income and the job search. Here are ten tips.

The exit interview is your opportunity to obtain information about what your organization is doing well - and, what your organization needs to do to improve. Exit interviews are key to organization improvement since rarely will you receive frank feedback from current employees. The exit interview questions you ask help you obtain actionable...

The exit interview is a powerful tool that you can use to obtain feedback from the employee who is leaving your company's employment. How you conduct the exit interview will determine the honesty and usefulness of the feedback you receive. The goal is, of course, honest feedback that you can use to improve your organization and prevent the loss...

You’d think that supplying a reference for a former employee should be a simple, straightforward activity. But, in our litigious society, providing a simple employment reference, in response to reference checks, is no longer widely practiced. In fact, most companies assign reference checks to the Human Resources staff. But, there are exceptions when employees may respond to reference check requ…

Severance pay is money that an employer might want to provide for an employee who is leaving their employ. Normal circumstances that might warrant severance pay include layoffs, job elimination, and mutual agreement to part ways for whatever reason. Severance pay usually amounts to a week or two of pay for each year of service to the company. In...

This legal guide, from Business Week, does an excellent job of discussing all aspects of hiring and firing including opinions and court decisions, issues relevant to only a few states. Is at-will employment really at will? Find out.

Even the best employer has employees resign. No matter your work environment or your positive employee relationships, employees resign for reasons that are beyond your control. They resign for new jobs and better opportunities. They resign to return to school or move across the country. They resign because they want more money than you can...