Dismissal Meeting
Student Name
Dr. Aaliyah Khan
HRM530-Strategic Human Resource Management
November 13, 2022
When the economy or the company business goes downhill, the easiest way a company can cut its
costs is by laying off some of it employees. This is never a popular decision, but many companies
will try other cost cutting decisions before they make the final decision to start laying off its
employees but if you are the one that is laid off from the company, you really don’t care what other
actions the company did before making this decision. You are out of a job. For some being laid off
can come unexpected and can be very shocking. But for others, they might have heard that the layoffs
were coming and prepared themselves for the undividable.
1. Propose three (3) ways that a manager can cope with any negative emotions that
may accompany an employee layoff.
There are many ways that a manager can cope with the negative emotions that may accompany an
employee layoff but here are the top 3 that managers can use:
Communicate.
Provide factual information
Quell rumors and gossip
Help staff remain focused and productive
Reassure staff that their colleagues were treated with respect
Set the tone for moving forward through the change process
Anticipate the remaining employees’ reaction
Those who remain will be experiencing a variety of feeling. This will include
management. It is critical that you acknowledge and respond to those feelings in order to help
the team and the company move forward.
Manage the transition of work
Be visible
Redesign process and tasks
Ask for input
Assign roles and responsibilities
Monitor progress
Plan for and handle set backs
(Maintaining morale and Motivating Survivors)
The major way that a manager can cope with the negative emotion of the remaining employees’ is
COMMUNICATE!!!! .
2. Describe a step-by-step process of conducting the dismissal meeting.
Unfortunately, if you are a business owner with employees, you will eventually be faced with needing
to terminate an employee (if you haven’t already had to do so). No matter how strong the company’s
recruiting, hiring, performance management, and management practices are, employee terminations
are an inevitable part of owning a business. Terminations can result from employee misconduct (e.g.,
fraud, theft, violation of standards of conduct or policy), performance issues, and changes in business
(e.g., lack of work, contracts ending, and new markets). (Brown, 2013)
Termination meetings tend to be stressful for both the employee and the person delivering the
message. Nonetheless, there are some key steps to follow that can make this meeting easier:
Make sure this meeting is done fact to face, not by letter, email or over the phone.
Who should conduct this meeting? The employee’s immediate supervisor and third
party witness to attend the meeting to observe the meeting and to make the employee feel
more comfortable and to make sure that nothing bad happens.
Where to conduct the meeting? The meeting should be out of sight and earshot of any
other employee, in a quiet place where you won’t be interrupted. The meeting should be held
on neutral ground, the meeting can be held in a conference room or in the office of someone
from Human Resources.
When to hold the meeting? Schedule the meeting early in the day and early in the
week, which is generally the best time to hold a termination interview. Avoid Fridays and the
day before a holiday or vacation. An employee who is fired on Friday has 2 days to brood
about his/her treatment by the company and to look for ways to retaliate. On the other hand,
terminating a person early in the week provides him/her with an opportunity to focus on the
future and begin looking for a new job right away. Also, the one that is doing the termination,
won’t have the weekend to think about the bad memory of the distasteful task on his/her mind.
What to do at the Dismissal meeting? The meeting should last about 10 to 15 minutes
and have the sole purpose of providing a simple and concise statement of the decision of the
department and the company to terminate the employment relationship.
1. Prepare what you are going to say during the meeting. Have a checklist in front of you
so that you will not get sidetracked and forget any important points.
2. Give an adequate reason for the discharge. Many workers who sue their ex-employers
do so because, at heart, what they really want is a full explanation of why they were let go,
and a chance to give their side of the story. You don’t have to spend a lot of time going over
every last detail of the employee’s conduct that led to the discharge, but you should provide a
reasonable explanation. ( Conducting a Termination Meeting)
3. Seek out employee’s explanation or interpretation of events. You may already have
done this when you investigated any misconduct that led to the firing. Even so, you should
allow the employee to have his or her say, and even to vent a little emotion. Don’t interrupt or
talk over the person. If the employee feels that he or she was forced out because of
discrimination, harassment, or some other allegedly offensive or illegal conduct on your part,
you’ll want to know about it now so that you can alert your attorney. ( Conducting a
Termination Meeting)
4. Make it clear that this decision is final.
5. Briefly run through the benefits. Briefly cover the vacation pay, separation pay,
continuation of health insurance or life insurance benefits, etc., that you are offering. If you
are attempting to get a release from the employee, this is the time to present it. It is a good
idea to have the employee’s final paycheck ready so that he or she has something positive to
carry away from the meeting. ( Conducting a Termination Meeting)
6. Explain you job reference policy. If it is your policy to provide only job title, dates of
employment, and salary history, now is the time to say so. If you normally give more
information when it is requested in writing by a qualified person (like a prospective
employer), tell the employee. In some states you may be required to provide a service letter on
request. In some cases, you may be willing to provide a satisfactory job reference or to tell
prospective employers that the worker resigned voluntarily, if the employee is willing to sign
a release form. ( Conducting a Termination Meeting)
7. Collect what’s your from the employee. Collect any keys, cell phones, company car,
company credit cards, or any other property belonging to the company from the employee. As
a manager/Supervisor you may want to do this now, or you may want to let the employee
“save face” by allowing him or her to return these items to you at a specific later date.
( Conducting a Termination Meeting)
3. Determine the compensation that the fictitious company may provide to the
separated employee.
A non-Officer Employee is eligible to receive Severance Pay. A non-Officer Employee or Vice
President who is terminated due to the following reasons is eligible to receive Severance Pay:
Reduction in Force
Position Elimination
A non-Officer Employee with a base salary of $125,000 or greater or Vice President who is
terminated for the following reasons is eligible to receive Severance Pay in addition to those noted
above:
Loss of Confidence
Agreement and Release of Claims
If you are a Severance Eligible Employee, you must sign an agreement and release of claims which is
provided by Freddie Mac within a specified time period as provided within said document agreement.
You are not eligible for Severance Pay under the Severance Plan unless this condition is met. This
agreement and release of claims absolves Freddie Mac from liability for any known or potential
claims relating to your period of employment with the Corporation or your termination of
employment and may include additional items at the Corporation’s discretion, such as noncompetition, confidentiality, non-solicitation, non-disparagement and restriction/preclusion of reemployment by Freddie Mac. The agreement and release of claims is intended to satisfy the standards
for a knowing and voluntary waiver under applicable law, including but not limited to the Age
Discrimination in Employment Act.
The Severance Period of a non-Officer Severance Eligible Employee is stated in the chart below:
Service Completed since Last Start Date. Severance Period for a Severance Eligible Employee
whose base salary is less than $125,000 is calculated in weeks. Severance Period for a Severance
Eligible Employee whose base salary is $125,000 or greater is calculated in Months.
4. Using Microsoft Word or an equivalent such as OpenOffice, create a chart that
depicts the timeline of the disbursement of the compensation.
Minimum Years of Service Maximum Years of Service Weeks of Severance Months of Severance
0 1 13 3
1 2 13 4
2 3 13 5
3 4 15 7
4 5 18 8
5 6 20 9
6 7 23 10
7 8 25 11
8 9 28 12
9 10 30 12
10 11 33 12
11 12 35 12
12 13 38 12
Severance pay may be paid in accordance to the Corporation’s standard payroll procedures, or the
terminated employee may elect to receive the severance pay in a single lump sum payment, the
terminated employee must make this election on or before the date the terminated employee must
sign the required agreement and release of claim. Failure to make an election upon execution of the
agreement will result in a lump sum payment. This payment will be subject to applicable
withholdings.
5. Predict three (3) ways that this layoff may affect the company.
When businesses come into rough financial times, they consider layoffs as an easy way to boost the
bottom line. Cut some overhead and reap the rewards, right? Not always. Layoffs often don’t pay off.
So how does a company evaluate all of the short- and long-term costs involved to ensure that layoffs
are the right action to take? In the near term, owners will incur the costs of severance and benefits
continuance, but other indirect and direct costs come into play, which may make layoffs less
appealing. And in the long run, the cost savings pale in comparison to what owners will spend on
staffing once their businesses ramp up again. Companies conducting a layoff find that there is a price
to pay in the short run for getting costs out. Besides a severance and benefits package, employers will
pay out accrued vacation and outplacement-services fees. There are other short-term costs to consider.
It takes time to process people out. Managers have to take the time to sit down and break the news to
employees, to assemble paperwork, to reallocate work to remaining employees, to train those
survivors how to do the work they’ve absorbed, and to handle other employee issues directly related
to the layoff — all of which eats managers’ and administrative staffs’ time and, therefore, money. The
effects of layoffs on surviving employees have a less obvious, but still important, short-term financial
impact. Morale directly affects productivity. Each laid-off employee will cost the company 50% of
the person’s compensation and benefits for each week that the position is vacant, even if there are
people performing the duties, and 100% of the person’s compensation and benefits if the position is
left completely open. Other indirect costs include lost knowledge, skills, contacts, and customers,
which are all hard to quantify but are real factors in determining the short-term costs of laying people
off. In the long term, a business’s initial cost savings can be obliterated by the cost it incurs to ramp
back up. The most ludicrous thing I’ve seen is that companies might make the balance sheet look
good in the short term but later have to hire people back. In essence, the cost savings only last as long
as the company doesn’t need to rehire employees, and in most cases, that’s not a long period of time.
The majority of companies that lay off employees find themselves back to pre-layoff employment
levels within 18 months. Rarely do companies see any long-term benefit from employment reduction.
Looking at the implications of layoffs in the long term reveals some hefty costs to the company,
especially if the organization decides that it needs to rehire employees. The employer will pay a
premium price for attracting valuable replacements, including the cost of recruiting and screening
candidates. An employer also will have to orient new employees and make supervisors available to
offer additional guidance and support while those employees get up to speed. Then there is an
economic-opportunity cost incurred, which is the difference between the productivity the company
would have enjoyed had they retained the laid-off employee and the productivity of the replacement
while he or she is learning the job. Costs can run up to an amount equal to two or three times the
annual compensation of the person laid off and is an additional cost above and beyond the annual
salary of the replacement. Lastly, there are less tangible costs, which include low morale, lost
innovation, fear of more layoffs, angry customers, and lost market share. So does it really pay to
layoff employees? At first glance layoffs seem to be an easy fix, but they don’t appear to be a strategic
initiative that pays off in the long run. (Mathews, C., The Real Cost of Layoffs, Inc., July 19, 2012)
References
Conducting a Termination Meeting. (n.d.). Retrieved from
http://www.bizfilings.com/toolkit/sbg/office-hr/managing-the-workplace/conductingemployee-termination-meetings.aspx
Brown, J. (2013, August 30). 9 Steps for Conducting an Employee Tewrmination Meetin.
Retrieved from http://peopletactics.com/9-steps-for-conducting-an-employeetermination-meeting/
Gandolifi, F. (2008, April). Learning from the past-Downsizing Lessons for Managers. Retrieved
from Journal of Management Research: Retrieved from www.bchrma.org/wpcontent/uploads/2012/07/rb-forcedlayoffs.pdf
Maintaining morale and Motivating Survivors. (n.d.). Retrieved from
https://www.washoecounty.us/repository/files/13/Maintaining%20Morale%20and
%20Motivating%20Survivors%20HO%20update%204-09.pdf
Mathews, C. (2012, July). The real cost of layoffs. Retrieved from
http://www.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/hr/hrdepts/asap/budgetcuts.html
Stewart, G. L., & Brown, K. G. (2011). Human Resource Management Second Editiion. In
Human Resource Management Linking Strategy to Practice (pp. 267-272).
