I wish for a day when if I have to fire someone, the organization that I am a part of has the combined advantage of insight, influence and capability to find alternatives for both the organization and the individual being fired.
I hope my organization has the insight to know where the person I am letting go would be a better fit in... and has the influence to recommend them there inside the organization or another one.
If the fired person is fit for no place of work in the or circle of influence in the current state of the organization, I hope we would still be able to provide support for them while giving them the opportunity to still engage in the orgaznization until they find an alternative... or find a useful opportunity inside when things change or when they they change i.e. acquire the skills that may be more useful to the organization.
I don't know how this can be made possible... i.e. what the organizational values that will be required to be able to achieve this while still being sustainable... or if government involvement is required and how can organizations fund tho government programs through taxes.
In some cases the experience is simply too traumatic for the fired employee, there’s no amount of professionalism, empathy, care, support the firing organization can provide to suppress a toxic dynamic to any remaining “engagement” with the organization. In these scenarios you really need to pull the band aid off and hard-terminate them; it’s best for everyone. And take your good intentions and put them into a retrospective and action plan to fix the organization, eg. modifying your interviews, eg. nipping performance problems in the bud, eg. pursuing only sustainable growth.
It’s also not easy to predict how a fired employee will react, but gets easier with experience. But big companies don’t leave room for any continued engagement for this reason- after layoffs they provide support at significant arm’s length.
No there are alternatives. You support the team switch before termination. Termination is a last resort option and should only be done after multiple people managed the person directly to remove bias.
I've seen a scenario where 2 people at anduril (where I work) were fired in 6 months and 1 person quit to get away from the manager. Statistically in this case it's a managerial problem and you need to place those employees in different teams to know that it's the manager that's the problem and not the employee.
Simply assuming the employee is the problem without additional oversight is the wrong path.
I hope the experience does not have to be toxic or negative. Maybe the company is transparent enough to reveal it's vision enough to the employees and it is not a random and unexpected decision... maybe those who are not needed anymore are in the position to know more or less when and why so they don't have to feel that it has to do with them personally.
>take your good intentions and put them into a retrospective and action plan to fix the organization
May be this will be the path to get there. I doubt it will happen by a political plan designed by career politicians out of popular fantacies they like to sell to the masses... which then they plan to impose on everyone. That approach will most likely backfire in unexpected ways. I believe it will have to happen organically and will most likely will come about in the most successful organizations who can afford to build it... at least in the beginning... before it becomes available to everyone.
Also, it is important to make organizations responsible for this and not end up with individuals funding this through increased taxes for the working class. Next time your favourite billionaire talks about UBI or something similar, ask them if they are willing to offer unemployment benefits or something like an UBI to people they hired and let go from the corporation itself... or if they are willing to pool in extra taxes for this purpose so that multiple organizations can offer this to their former employees. They have incentives to make it the "government's problem" i.e. just use the income taxes from the working class to make this happen... and they absolve them of any responsibility and commitment to make this work.
I definitely wished for this. Sometimes I think this is well worth the additional weeks/month or two of support financially and otherwise to both keep good morale and to be pretty decent to that human being.
I hope my organization has the insight to know where the person I am letting go would be a better fit in... and has the influence to recommend them there inside the organization or another one.
If the fired person is fit for no place of work in the or circle of influence in the current state of the organization, I hope we would still be able to provide support for them while giving them the opportunity to still engage in the orgaznization until they find an alternative... or find a useful opportunity inside when things change or when they they change i.e. acquire the skills that may be more useful to the organization.
I don't know how this can be made possible... i.e. what the organizational values that will be required to be able to achieve this while still being sustainable... or if government involvement is required and how can organizations fund tho government programs through taxes.