How do you sack staff in the remote work era? Hint: Not with an automated text message

Some 2700 bleary-eyed employees at a US company woke up last week to an automated text message informing them they’d been sacked effective immediately “due to unforeseen business circumstances”, which one expert says would swiftly see an Australian workplace added to a “blacklist”.

United Furniture Industries (UFI), a furniture company, sent an identical text message to all staff in North Carolina, Mississippi and California around midnight on November 21 informing them they would not be permitted to return to work.

“At the instruction of the board of directors … we regret to inform you that due to unforeseen business circumstances, the company has been forced to make the difficult decision to terminate the employment of all its employees, effective immediately,” the message, which The New York Post saw, read.

“Your layoff from the company is expected to be permanent and all benefits will be terminated immediately without provision of COBRA,” a follow-up email read (COBRA is the continuation of health insurance when an employee is sacked).

“As soon as the property manager can provide a safe and orderly process for former employees to come and gather their belongings, they will do so … We are not certain of the timeframe for this but will communicate proactively,” the email said.

It comes just weeks after Twitter employees shared their dismal experience of being blocked from the company Slack and their email accounts as new CEO Elon Musk conducted widespread layoffs without consulting some staff.

A former senior software engineer, Jaseem Abid, tweeted that he was “fired without even a confirmation email while sleeping” after he couldn’t log into Twitter’s Slack or Gmail, while he was surprised to learn his work laptop had ben remotely wiped.

“There is always a new low,” the London-based engineer said.

Lessons for Australian businesses

As swathes of the global workforce moved to a hybrid or remote structure during the pandemic, allowing staff to work from anywhere, and on occasion, in any timezone, new considerations also arose about retrenchment.

But Cameron Shepherd, director of Shape HR, tells SmartCompany that there are some things that should remain the same no matter what format the workplace takes.

“Thanks to new technologies the way companies communicate with their staff has changed however there are certain principles that haven’t,” he said.

“Telling someone that they are losing their job is never easy however giving them as much notice as possible, providing as much detail as possible and attempting to have a two-way conversation are a solid starting point.”

Louise Gibson, founder and director of leadership consultancy With Verve, agrees.

“Working remotely is no excuse for communicating redundancies as if they are a transaction and your people are merely numbers,” Gibson said.

“Even when these decisions have to be made swiftly, it is possible to manage the communication process with compassion and care.”

So what does that mean in practical terms? Simple, Gibson says: it “means staying clear of text messages or emails and prioritising verbal interactions” when it comes to sticky conversations.

“Best case is a conversation in person with each impacted person but when people are spread across locations or time zones, then the next best option is to take the time to directly engage through a Zoom call or over the phone,” she continued.

“When good times return, the investment made in giving your people dignity and respect will return dividends when it comes to attracting and retaining talent, a critical ingredient for reviving your business prospects.”

And always remember — people talk. Whether it’s former employees, or the loved ones of those employees, a historically tight labour market means no workplace wants to gain a reputation for the ill-treatment of staff.

“In a digital or hybrid workplace, people are still the core of your business and good times or bad, it’s how you treat your people that makes the difference between being an employer of choice or being on the blacklist.”