Laid off employee blasts management in mass e-mail
Filed under: Communication, In this week's e-newsletter, Latest News & Views, Security and law
Employees’ access to e-mail and other electronic communication tools has made it easier for them to fight back against management decisions they disagree with — often causing serious morale problems among the rest of the staff.
Take this recent example:
Shinyung Oh worked for the San Francisco branch of a large international law firm. After seven years of employment, she was laid off — six days after she suffered a miscarriage.
Before she left, she sent an e-mail to 1,000 of her co-workers decrying the firm’s “heartlessness.”
“Perhaps an associate’s emotional vulnerability after a recent miscarriage is a factor you should consider the next time you fire or lay someone off,” Oh wrote, addressing upper management. “It shows startlingly poor judgment and management skills — and cowardice — on your parts.”
What can companies do to keep ex-employees’ angry communication from distracting remaining workers and causing serious morale problems? Legally, employers have little recourse.
In one court case, Intel sued a former worker who sent mass e-mails to current employees accusing the company of unfair labor practices. Intel was trying to recover payment for damages to productivity it claimed the e-mails caused.
The California Supreme Court ruled the company wasn’t entitled to any payment because it couldn’t show the ex-employee caused any actual damage to its computer system (Cite: Intel Corp. v. Hamidi).
One thing that can be done: Once there’s a problem, have IT block all messages from that sender so the angry messages can’t continue.
Also, HR can make sure management handles terminations in a way that minimizes the chances an employee will be angry enough to retaliate.
Comments
4 Comments on Laid off employee blasts management in mass e-mail
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A on
Tue, 24th Mar 2009 11:36 am
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Albert on
Tue, 24th Mar 2009 2:32 pm
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JParr on
Tue, 24th Mar 2009 2:33 pm
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SrHRGuy on
Tue, 24th Mar 2009 7:19 pm
Block all messages from the sender. Sure, that’s easy enough to do. Once you know which e-mail that they are sending from.
I expect another news article to come out stating Intel is now having to pay this lady something for her suffering.Got to love the California courts.
Ultimately, nothing is going to keep an employee from retaliating, but it helps to have severance terms that favor the employee. Treating the employee equitably by providing company benefits such as severance pay and job search assistance services are an ongoing incentive past the point of termination for the employee to continue to behave in a professional manner.
It also helps to remind them of non-compete and confidentiality agreements, which includes communicating with customers or accessing company resources without permission.
As I have posted previously, it’s a good idea to consider the following technology assets and have a plan around each for mass terminations:
- Cell phones, phone numbers, voicemail access
- B2B and B2C websites and vendor accounts / portals
- External-facing websites that could be used to DoS internal resources (such as publicly-accessible webmail)
- Company credit cards, phone cards, conference bridge access
- Purchasing accounts
- Company-owned laptops / desktops
I couldn’t agree with JParr more. Also, the way that I read this article, it appears that they hadn’t killed access to the EE’s computer or email when they termed her. I’d never allow a separated employee access to their system and we have a plan about when to shut off their network/email access.
