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

Employment ends for positive reasons such as a new job, a resignation or retirement. Employment also ends for more negative reasons such as layoffs, downsizing, job termination or firing. Whatever the reason for the job change, help is available to aid you in the transition. These resources will help you decide whether or when, or aid you in an involuntary job loss. Take a look.
How to Keep Your Job - How to Keep Your Job and Avoid Employm…
In the attached article, I discussed actions to take while you are still employed when you think your employment is in danger of termination. Do you have strategies to share about how to keep your job in the face of potential employment termination? In these economic times, keeping your job is the priority. Share your tips for keeping your job.
What's Your Strategy for Keeping Your Job?
No matter your job or your industry, this year is a challenge for employment. In 2008, 48% of employers laid people off, according to a Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM) survey cited at CNNmoney.com.
Buyout
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.
Getting Fired or Laid Off?
Employment termination - no matter the cause - is scary, disorienting, and disruptive to habitual patterns. Getting fired is never fun; layoffs are equally disheartening. In either scenario, your feelings of self worth are dealt a blow. Just when you need a positive outlook to help you find your next opportunity, you feel dizzy as if your whole world is spinning out of control. Don’t despair. Better? Prepare yourself for your next layoff or employment termination – before the fateful meeting.
Employee Resignation: How to Handle an Employee Resignation
The reasons are endless for an employee resignation. But, each employee resignation poses the employer with a series of questions. How do you announce the employeeÂ’s resignation? Who needs to know what about the employeeÂ’s resignation? When do you tell your employees about the employee resignation? Here are answers to the questions you may have about employee resignation.
Resignation Letter: Future Plans - Sample
Sample letter of resignation or a resignation letter for the human resources policy, checklist, procedure, and samples directory. This resignation letter informs your current employer of your future plans.
Severance Pay
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 some instances, a severance package might include extended benefits and outplacement assistance.
How to Fire an Employee: Legally, Ethically
Assuming that you have taken all possible steps to help an employee improve their work performance, it may be time to fire the employee. These are the legal and the ethical steps in how to fire an employee. Ensure that the company's actions are above reproach. How you fire an employee sends a powerful to your remaining staff - either positive or negative. How you fire an employee matters.
Stop Being Miserable at Work
Are you miserable at work? Do you never feel good about heading to work? Do you feel unchallenged, unhappy, or not in control? Is your boss the worst? Do your coworkers engage in unjustifiable complaining. If you continue to participate in any of these situations, you will ensure that you will continue to hate your job. And, hating your job is the centerpiece for a miserable life. Why go there?
How to Respond to a Reference Check
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.
Top Ten Reasons to Quit Your Job
Are you feeling increasingly unhappy about your job? Then, it may be time for you to quit your job. Or, address the issues that you dislike about your current career. Without leaving your job, you may be able to solve the problems. Take a look at these reasons to determine whether it's time to quit your current job. Perhaps you can identify adjustments that will re-invigorate your job and career.
Employment Terminations – How To Avoid Legal Problems
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 employee's employment.
Employee Termination from an IT Perspective
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.
How to Fire With Compassion and Class
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 well-being of the rest of your employees. Read more.
Perform Exit Interviews: Questions for Exit Interviews
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 information. This is how to conduct an exit interview.
Rise Above the Fray: Options for Dealing With Difficult People at Work
Difficult people do exist at work. Difficult people come in every variety and no workplace is without them. How difficult a person is for you to deal with depends on your self-esteem, your self-confidence and your professional courage. Dealing with difficult people is easier when the person is just generally obnoxious or when the behavior affects more than one person. Dealing with difficult people is much tougher when they are attacking you or undermining your professional contribution.
Employment Ending Checklist
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 checklist to help the employee exit process go smoothly.
How to Improve Exit Interview Participation Rates
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.
I Just Lost My Job: How Am I Going To Tell My Kids?
One of the responsibilities of a human resources professional is to let employees know that their job has been eliminated. Job loss and the following 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.
Pink Slip. What Next?
How to handle a lay-off, including benefits and unemployment information, and how to get on the fast-track to a new job. This is good information from Job Searching Guide Alison Doyle.
Legal Guide to Hiring and Firing
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.
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