The worst part about a recession is that people lose their jobs and there is no nice way to go about making people redundant but there are some ways that are better than others.
How do the staff at Llyods and Hbos feel knowing that while the axe hovers above 20,000 of them, the bosses are sharing out millions in bonuses. Things are really messed up when this is seen as acceptable because it isn't, you just cannot make a case for this being right.
Likewise the decision to tell the 850 staff at BMW that they were now redundant an hour before there shift ended.
To make things worse, they are Agency staff and therefore have no claim to redundancy regardless of how long they have been employed there. I don't know, but my guess would be that BMW have known for a while that they were going to have to cut back on staff so why was no period of notice given so the staff had at least a glimmer of a chance of finding something else. Even a weeks notice would have been poor but would have been something. To call them together and say that in 60 minutes you are unemployed is shabby.
The recession is sad and unless you are in one of the safer jobs, we all are under threat and dread the call to a meeting with the boss but there are more sympathetic ways to break the bad news.
I just hope that BMW and Lloyds and everyone else who doesn't give a seconds thought to their staff get what is coming to them. A bit of compassion is the very least they could show.
4 comments:
I'm surprised that Lloyd's has lasted so long. Everyone I know who has worked with them says they have a pretty bad ethic. But BMW sure does make nice cars...
It never fails to amaze me how some companies handle the business of redundancy.
I used to work for a bank in which my manager called a 'project review' meeting for himself and one of the business analysts, in about 3 days times... a meeting for which she (the BA) had to do several hours of preparation... and when she got there she saw that the Human Resources manager was also there, and it was actually her official 'P45' meeting! Project not discussed!
And another of my friends was given precisely 10 minutes to clear his desk out. Sheesh. This was a redundancy, not a dismissal.
The current situation shouldn't be a carte blanche for bosses behaving like dicks. If it is, I hope a lot of them end up in front of Employment Tribunals.
Nog: Lloyds TSB was a very successful institution. Lloyds Banking Group, on the other hand, which by this Thursday will have existed for precisely one month... not so much!
All banks seem to have a strange sense of ethics. Im not sure if it was Llyods or one of the others but they tried to bring in charges for withdrawing your own money from cashpoints a few years back and how can they get away with charging £25 for a letter to tell you that you are overdrawn on your account.
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