You didn’t see it coming, but...you’re fired!

What’s it like to be face-to-face with human resources when they say they’re letting you go?

“I sat in my car for three hours, played loud music and went to sleep,” says a former Dubai resident who was recently ‘made redundant’ at the global professional services company he was with. Let’s call him Atif (he and his former company can’t be named as he’s hoping to come back to the UAE). Atif didn’t see the news coming. He resisted, argued his case with HR, but finally had to leave Dubai and go back home to Pakistan when he got fired (because of the usual-job-equals-visa situation). “We will have to draw a line in your career with us,” is what they told him, he recalls.
Imagine this. You’re in office. It’s a regular day. Around 3 or 4 pm, you get a call from HR saying, please come see us. You’ve known the company has not been doing well. (Maybe you got a warning letter, a performance improvement plan. Maybe you didn’t). Now, walking to HR, your nerves start acting up. Perhaps you visualise your head on a walnut wood chopping block. Words like KRA (Key Result Areas) are flying around in your head. Or a thought of when the kids’ school fees are due catches you. Maybe your palms get a bit damp. You know what’s coming. As anyone who’s seen the poignant 2009 George Clooney flick Up in the Air knows, it can’t be good. But neither is it a cakewalk for HR.
Sneha Saini, deputy HR manager with an oil and gas company in UAE makes a case for the humane side of HR people. “We do feel very bad!” She’s been in the odd sticky spot. “I remember once I had to fire a very good friend of mine at office. In the afternoon, I had lunch with her, and in the evening, called to give her the bad news.”
The equation between you and the HR person is an odd one. It’s simultaneously personal, scary, isolating, intimate (if one cries and the other consoles) and involves an unequal power equation.
So what happens when an HR person across the table tells you not to come in after the next day? People who’ve been through the experience say they would rather not dwell on it. And HR folks say they’re no strangers to slammed doors and profanities uttered on the walk out of the firing room.
There are reports that the shock of losing a job is akin to losing a close family member. No one forgets getting sacked. Some details always stick and (if not haunt), play on your mind later, again and again — how the person worded it, how they delivered it, what was their expression, what was that thing they said about performance or contribution or company losses? How did they soften the blow? Did they seem to not care? And how often did they resort to sentences that started with ‘unfortunately’ and ‘sorry, but’?
One former employee, in his 50s, of a Dubai-based company he’d worked at since his kids were toddlers and was asked to go towards the end of last year, was upset. He said he felt humiliated, “Those guys sacking me were younger than my kids”.
A former talent acquisition manager in Dubai (unemployed now) says it’s especially tough when you’re letting go of good performers for no fault of theirs — like when a division closes down. It gets harder when the good performers being laid off bear multiple liabilities (medical bills on top of loans, etc). “Sometimes, people don’t listen, they try to negotiate without understanding that there is no negotiation at that stage,” adding that, “I can’t go back to my manager and tell him I haven’t been able to close the profile, because my KRA also depends on it.” This is a person who, in his career of over 10 years, has fired more than 100 people. “There are (lists of names). It isn’t easy. But we have to do it. We can’t always give much time to each person. We explain and try to be positive, helpful and as sensitive as possible, but it has to be quick,” admitting they have to “sometimes control our temper and irritation if they’re just not listening and raising their voices instead.”
When it was his turn to receive the news, he knew the drill — he says he didn’t argue or stay too long, knowing there was no point.
In most cases, there is no relationship between HR and employee in that short window of time, nothing beyond a forced, surface cordiality. Some HR people are more indifferent than others, same with employees. Some take it calmly, ask a question or two about last day and final settlements and walk out. Others may want to shoot the messenger.
Saini says, “There’s no pleasure in delivering bad news and telling people that their services are no longer required. Empathy plays an important role here. You have no idea how the employee will react, cry or shout. We fired a department head and he literally smashed the door in our faces! But what needs to be done should be done. It’s heartbreaking.”
What about the friend though, who was sacked after lunch? Do they still talk or did that become awkward and one ghosted the other? “Oh, yes,” she says. “We still talk, very much so, we’re still good friends”.
Things HR says when sacking (aka firing, making redundant, giving the pink slip, laying off, letting go)
STARTING WITH:
“How are things going with you at work?”

OFTEN HEARD:
“Unfortunately, you and your  line manager are not on the same page.”

OUCH:
“You’re doing good work but we think you should be allowed to pursue other career opportunities.”

ALSO HEARD:
“We have to draw a line in your career with us.”

NO-ONE EVER SAYS:
“Your services are no longer valuable to us.”
nivriti@khaleejtimes.com

• UAE