Workers find their termination dates on company Intranet
October 16, 2008 by Fred HosierPosted in: HR blunder of the week, In this week's e-newsletter, Latest News & Views
HR can make great use of company Intranets to post things like policies and information about benefits. Probably everyone would agree that employees’ termination dates are something that the Intranet should not be used for.
About 50 employees of Sirius XM satellite radio found out their termination dates by checking the company’s internal payroll Web site.
One employee went to the site on Oct. 14 and was startled to find a termination date of Oct. 15 on his/her record, according to industry publication Radio and Records.
In just moments, employees within shouting distance of their co-worker were logged on to try and find out their fates.
Shortly after that, access to the site was reportedly denied, but by then, the damage had been done.
Reports say an emergency management meeting was held, memos from HR began flying, and the fired workers were formally contacted.
The layoffs probably didn’t come as a complete surprise. Sirius and XM merged earlier this year. The new company’s CEO, Mel Karmazin, has been quoted for months saying the combined companies would save money through “synergies.”
Tags: Intranet, synergies, terminations
October 17th, 2008 at 7:04 am
[...] at 6:00 am | In termination | It’s Friday, so here is a rather amusing story that I found at HRBlunders.com. Well, its funny, but at the same time its probably not funny to the employees who were on the [...]
October 17th, 2008 at 3:47 pm
Actually, I don’t see what the problem is with termination dates, so long as the reason for the termination isn’t indicated (Resigned, Terminated for policy violation, etc.). The same goes for a hiring date. I find that if a company had a website that previous employees could check this information for themselves, there would be far less problems in their filling out applications at a later date.
We don’t post this information for employees, but again, I still don’t see a problem with this as this is purely a fact of business; Hired this date, terminated this date, and worked in this position. Now posting SS numbers, birth dates, addresses and phone numbers, dependents, race, veteran status, disability, salary, etc. certainly would be very problematic at best.
October 17th, 2008 at 3:48 pm
Editor’s note: Maybe it wasn’t clear by the story, but this is how the employees found out they were being laid off.
October 20th, 2008 at 10:09 am
I read this story before. It is a poorly managed company or department which permitted this to happen. I understand it was the HR Manager’s fault. Carelessness, or failing to attend to details, or a lack of professionalism caused this. If it were my company somebody would be following the others out the door.
October 20th, 2008 at 4:49 pm
Lets put this in perspective. There are HR managers with professional ethics and there are those that have no ethics…um I wonder where this one falls. One of the interesting things I noted is that companies rarely if ever hire someone with out first meeting them. So why is it that people will take something so personal as termination of ones employment and do it over the phone or in an e-mail? Maybe it is simply a lack of courage to face the conflict.
November 10th, 2008 at 8:36 am
The termination dates DID NOT belongs entered into any system, online or otherwise until AFTER the employee was actually terminated.