HR Double Talk Spurs Employment Discrimination Cases
Yesterday I was talking to a friend, Max (not his real name) who is a high level executive for a large firm in New York City. Max had to lay off people lately and worked with human resources to select people for lay off. He was joking around about how ridiculous the lay off process is at his firm. He said that the real reason for firing people is hardly ever mentioned. Instead, HR uses pre-formulated reasons that often have no connection to reality. He said that when he picks someone for termination he just picks the people who he does not like and who are not doing a good job. He said that if it was up to him he would tell people the real reason they were fired - like, sorry Ted, I had to let someone go and you are always late so I chose you." But instead, Ted is told by HR that "due to a job redundancy and downsizing parameters, your title has been eliminated." So Ted will never know why he was actually fired and might even suspect foul play since the truth was not told. Ted may go see an employment lawyer and since Ted is 62 years old and was given a bogus reason for termination, Ted might think he was fired due to age discrimination. But if the HR people would just tell Ted he was fired for being late, then Ted might not suspect age discrimination. I bet that a lot of employment discrimination cases could be avoided if companies just told the straight and simple truth when they fired people.
