From this month onwards, your challenges become my mission, but to kick off I would like to sound off and rat on a rotter. When I was working for a retailer a few years ago, I was a happy, motivated and fulfilled young buck. For two years I had been part of a team of 19 people who - one sunny Saturday afternoon - met our regional manager for the first time. The store manager received a phone call minutes before we closed and we were told to await his arrival. Sure enough, a BMW 5 series swanked up and a shiny-suited, sunglassed gimp arrived. Speculation abounded about a much-rumoured new bonus scheme, as we had all worked tirelessly for weeks in order to get - and beat - our targets. He gathered us round and proceeded to read from a prepared statement. With 200 words he shattered the lives of all of us by explaining that the store was closing in two weeks and we were fired. He kept his sunglasses on throughout, had the body language of Rudolph Hess and his voice had
all the convincing sincerity of Jeffrey Archer. At the end, he asked us if we had any questions and without giving our shocked brains the chance to come up with one, he upped and left, explaining that he had other commitments. Having called him back to express our shock at both the message and its delivery, he made a half-hearted attempt at wanting to listen to concerns but as soon as the first remotely challenging question came up, he literally walked out.
Now, I appreciate and sincerely hope that this practice is rare, but you do still hear of weak managers who make a hash of the challenging job of firing people or forcing through redundancy. Press reports of sackings by text message and incidences where the cancellation of a security pass is the first indication an individual has that they are being 'let go' underline the fact that thousands of examples of shoddy practice happen every day. Confidentiality and other basic rules of best practice are vital when letting people go, but an altogether more important aspect of delivery so often falls short of the mark. Honesty, humanity and, most importantly, a very direct involvement from senior staff is absolutely crucial if the disaffected individuals are to accept the decision graciously, no matter how compelling the commercial logic that lies behind the decision itself.
Most of your team - and possibly you - have had personal experience of having the redundancy bombshell dropped upon them. Their lasting bitterness is not against the decision but how it was presented. The vividness of the memories - no matter how distant - is a clue to how badly these incidents were handled. My memory of that redundancy is as fresh today as it was the day of the event 10 years ago. We were a mature team who used our own personal standards as benchmarks, where doing a good job was part of our commitment to that team. Handled differently, we would have understood, even empathised with the difficult job that the area manager had to do and prided ourselves on doing our very best for the last few days.
As it was, the way it was handled bred resentment over the last four weeks and nurtured our ability to avoid the security cameras, resulting in at least 5,000 of suspiciously missing stock. The manager was, for those ever unlucky enough to come across him, ironically called Mr Manners - and a pox on him and all those reading this who are similar.
