Amazon Workers Facing Firing Can Appeal To a Jury of Their Co-Workers (bloomberg.com) 108
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Jane was working in Amazon's Seattle headquarters when she was asked to a meeting with her manager and a human resources representative. They gave her a document outlining concerns about her work performance and spelled out three choices. She could quit and receive severance pay, spend the next several weeks trying to keep her job by meeting certain performance goals, or square off with her manager in a videoconference version of the Thunderdome, pleading her case with a panel of co-workers while her boss argued against her. Jane, who asked that her real name not be used to discuss a personal matter, chose the last one.
Amazon is borrowing a page from union grievance processes that don't apply to most corporate employees. But only about 30 percent of those who appeal their manager's criticisms prevail, meaning they can keep their jobs or seek new ones within the company with different bosses, according to people familiar with the matter. Eighteen months after its debut, the hearing process has created resentment and raised questions about fairness, according to current and former workers as well as attorneys familiar with their situations. "It's a kangaroo court," says George Tamblyn, a Seattle employment lawyer who helped one former Amazon worker plan her appeal earlier this year. "My impression of the process is it's totally unfair." According to a person familiar with the process, the workers who fail to make their case and get their job back can still choose between severance pay or a performance-improvement plan. The program, called "Pivot," was started last year.
Here's what Amazon has to say on the matter: "Pivot is a uniquely Amazonian program that was thoughtfully designed to provide a fair and transparent process for employees who need support. When employees are placed in Pivot, they have the option of working with their manager and HR to improve with a clear plan forward, of leaving Amazon with severance, or of appealing if they feel they shouldn't be in the program. Just over a year into program, we're pleased with the support it offers our employees and we're continuing to iterate based on employee feedback and their needs."
Amazon is borrowing a page from union grievance processes that don't apply to most corporate employees. But only about 30 percent of those who appeal their manager's criticisms prevail, meaning they can keep their jobs or seek new ones within the company with different bosses, according to people familiar with the matter. Eighteen months after its debut, the hearing process has created resentment and raised questions about fairness, according to current and former workers as well as attorneys familiar with their situations. "It's a kangaroo court," says George Tamblyn, a Seattle employment lawyer who helped one former Amazon worker plan her appeal earlier this year. "My impression of the process is it's totally unfair." According to a person familiar with the process, the workers who fail to make their case and get their job back can still choose between severance pay or a performance-improvement plan. The program, called "Pivot," was started last year.
Here's what Amazon has to say on the matter: "Pivot is a uniquely Amazonian program that was thoughtfully designed to provide a fair and transparent process for employees who need support. When employees are placed in Pivot, they have the option of working with their manager and HR to improve with a clear plan forward, of leaving Amazon with severance, or of appealing if they feel they shouldn't be in the program. Just over a year into program, we're pleased with the support it offers our employees and we're continuing to iterate based on employee feedback and their needs."
Union (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm betting they implemented this process to avoid true unionization.
Maybe there's a twist? (Score:2, Funny)
If the jury chooses in favor of the employee, one of the jurors has to lose their job.
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Isn't that about the same as forced arbitration? If the arbitrator doesn't vote in favor of the employer, then said employer will go out and find a new arbitrator.
Re:Maybe there's a twist? (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't that about the same as forced arbitration?
Not really. You can lose in arbitration. But she can't lose in this process. She has three choices. If she chooses the 3rd, and the "jury" votes against her, she can still go back to option 1 or 2. So if she wants to keep her job, picking option 3 is a no-brainer.
However, I have found that when people are fired for cause, their co-workers are generally not very sympathetic. Peers are usually more aware than management of who is deadweight. Often the prevailing sentiment is "What took so long?"
Re:Maybe there's a twist? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Wouldn't it be better to fire the boss? After all, if they are arguing to fire a 'good' employee, their judgement is faulty and they need to leave.
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Wouldn't it be better to fire the boss? After all, if they are arguing to fire a 'good' employee, their judgement is faulty and they need to leave.
You would think so, wouldn't you? But bosses don't fire bosses, it hits too close to home. See, nobody cares about firing a good employee as long as they get to keep taking home their own paycheck. Quite the contrary: good employees are seen as threats.
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Apple used to have an employee evaluation process in place where the employee evaluates their manager. All the manager's direct reports evaluations of that manager were used as part of the manager's own evaluation.
The organization just round files those manager evaluations, their sole purpose is to enhance the illusion that the manager is accountable for their treatment of you. That way, you are less likely to advocate for union formation or take other inconvenient measures.
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I'm gonna take a wild guess and say that if a particular manager has more than one loss he's not getting promoted or a raise anytime soon and he would be fired or demoted before that number hits double digits. Hard to say since the program has only been in place for a year.
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Maybe they're just experimenting.
I wonder why only 30% keep their jobs. Do their coworkers just hate them, too? Are they getting fired because they're terrible at their jobs? Does the company misrepresent them?
It all sounds very strange.
Re:Union (Score:5, Interesting)
Big company firing process.
1st unwritten step. Make them (more) miserable. Most of the actual 'picked on, good employees' just find a better gig.
By the time they have 3 written and signed write ups etc, everybody knows what's coming. I'm kind of amazed 30% keep their jobs. Amazon must have incredibly shitty managers.
Re:Union (Score:4, Insightful)
Presumably managers aren't entirely terrible, the coworkers agreeing with him 70% of the time doesn't sound very outlandish to me.
These presumably aren't minimum wage jobs, if someone is dead weight they drag everyone down.
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Presumably managers aren't entirely terrible, the coworkers agreeing with him 70% of the time doesn't sound very outlandish to me.
What makes you think that such agreement is only to avoid retaliation?
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Presumably managers aren't entirely terrible, the coworkers agreeing with him 70% of the time doesn't sound very outlandish to me.
What makes you think that such agreement is only to avoid retaliation?
Presumably, they are not pulling a jury from people under the manager who is having to argue the case for firing.
Honestly, I'd argue that the 30% is actually a rather high number, because it suggests that 3 out of every 10 attempts to fire an employee are for bad reasons. You want the number of managers who lose to be low--by having the majority of employees facing firing doing so for good reasons, not because their manager has taken a dislike to them or has merely been promoted above their competence leve
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Presumably managers aren't entirely terrible, the coworkers agreeing with him 70% of the time doesn't sound very outlandish to me.
What makes you think that such agreement is only to avoid retaliation?
Presumably, they are not pulling a jury from people under the manager who is having to argue the case for firing.
Why would that make a difference? Managers stick together. Not being directly under the reviewed manager makes the coworkers even easier to target because there is the deniability.
Obviously you have never worked in one of these hellholes, or more likely you are one of those psycho low level managers, probably making less than those engineers you abuse for kicks.
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Why would that make a difference? Managers stick together.
Really? You think managers stick together? In most cases other managers are your competition for resources, budget, priority and in some cases even people.
Just as workers know who the other crappy workers are, managers know who the other crappy managers are
No one covers for a crappy manager who is a peer.
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No one covers for a crappy manager who is a peer.
Then how, do you suppose, do those crappy managers manage to become the majority of the manager population, as is clearly the case?
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They may be your competitor, but they are also someone you have to work with. You crap on them, they will in turn crap on you and make your job even harder. So while you may competing, you can actively oppose other managers. So in a way they do work together and they have little reason to stick their neck out for a good employee in another team. If they want to get ahead, having that crappy manager have crappy employees and driving out good ones is a great way for them to get ahead in the game.
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Do the co-workers agree with them or are they just afraid of reprisal for contradicting their boss?
Also, assassination is the oldest means of advancement in the world.
Re:Union (Score:5, Insightful)
One problem is that the same manager is responsible for the performance improvement plan who was responsible for the initial decision. So the odds of anyone surviving the performance improvement plan are likely fairly low. After all, if the person was underperforming, it is usually either because the person wasn't enjoying the job (and will continue to not enjoy it), was being mismanaged (and will continue to be mismanaged), or wasn't actually underperforming and is being targeted by the manager (and will continue to be targeted). The only edge case that this ostensibly solves would be giving people a chance to make up for a bad period caused by problems outside of work that impacted work, and even then, only if it doesn't overlap multiple review periods.
For this to actually reduce the number of firings significantly, it would need to be combined with automatically transferring the person to a different team under a different manager prior to starting the performance improvement plan.
Re:Union (Score:5, Informative)
So the odds of anyone surviving the performance improvement plan are likely fairly low.
My experience is that people never survive the "improvement plan". If they were too incompetent to do their job before, that is not going to change. If they just lack motivation and effort, that is going to get even worse.
The "probation period" is mainly a way to may the firing process less psychologically stressful for the manager. Most managers do not like firing people and tend to delay the process beyond the best interests of the company.
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My experience is that people never survive the "improvement plan". If they were too incompetent to do their job before, that is not going to change.
As someone who used to work 15 hours a day in a warehouse, I take great offense to calling people incompetent if they cannot meet quotas. Nobody can meet quota in places like that, and since quotas are "adjusted" by computers for a variety of hidden variables we were not allowed to know, it's impossible to know why you weren't meeting quota at all. Even the managers didn't know how our numbers were calculated.
Eventually they came around and told me I was below quota, and they wanted me to sign all kinds o
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As someone who used to work 15 hours a day in a warehouse, I take great offense to calling people incompetent if they cannot meet quotas. Nobody can meet quota in places like that, and since quotas are "adjusted" by computers for a variety of hidden variables we were not allowed to know, it's impossible to know why you weren't meeting quota at all. Even the managers didn't know how our numbers were calculated.
Eventually they came around and told me I was below quota, and they wanted me to sign all kinds of papers enrolling me into some improvement plan. Instead, I gave them a three week notice. If I was incompetent, they sure didn't show it, since they tried really hard to keep me working there.
You are likely describing a constructive discharge. Sometimes it stops if you are open about knowing that they are attempting to get you to quit by making the job environment hostile, because HR doesn't want to have the legal trouble.
If it doesn't? Find a lawyer.
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Yeah, but it was pretty standard treatment for everyone, not just me. The bottom performers get the axe, but everyone gets warnings about their performance just to kick us in the ass (hence, all the secrecy about how the numbers are calculated). In general, that's the way warehouse jobs are, especially when they fully convert to computerized voice picking. BTW, I didn't work for Amazon -- I worked for a huge medical distributor.
I was just smart enough to save/invest most of my money, so I was in a financ
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So the odds of anyone surviving the performance improvement plan are likely fairly low.
My experience is that people never survive the "improvement plan". If they were too incompetent to do their job before, that is not going to change. If they just lack motivation and effort, that is going to get even worse.
The "probation period" is mainly a way to may the firing process less psychologically stressful for the manager. Most managers do not like firing people and tend to delay the process beyond the best interests of the company.
Then you're not understanding the purpose of the "improvement plan". It's just paperwork to cover the company even in at-will states. A manager who puts an employee into that situation has already decided that they're gone. If anything it's a time to use company resources to job hunt and make sure your references are current.
Since you're already out the door you can pretty much stop caring. You'll never meet the goals (even if you do) so there's no real point to trying. Instead of following their plan learn
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Maybe, amazingly, most of the people who are in consideration for being fired actually deserve to be fired. Contrary to what some people seem to think most managers aren't clueless drones. They know what their doing.
I know at my own place of business when someone is put on a personal improvement plan not one of their co-workers are typically surprised. Typically people aren't fired except for grievous cause, like threats of bodily harm to a manager or coworker, or such.
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Its niece too no some body does.
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Sounds like a union.
It is nothing like a union. It is just a half hearted attempt to counter some bad things that happen to profitability when middle managers take advantage of the absence of meaningful anti-abuse labour laws.
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There's a 30% chance they get to keep their job and move to a different manager if they want with no repercussions, and they still get the other two options if they lose. Stellar editing by BeauHD btw, he managed to give attribution the person familiar to the process to a completely different piece of information from the article than the one they were responsible for.
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You really don’t understand Unions.
Unions love them or hate them are mostly around collective bargaining. Meaning you as an individual to the union are a single paying member. If trying to get fired you are to them a lost customer, so they may put some effort into keeping you in the job. However the process that the union will do this will be different for every job and union.
Amazons “court” system may be a way some unions do it, and the unions may have invented it. However unlike the
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Unions fear workforce reductions at their employers, not individual employee losses.
Lose an electrician that will be replaced by another electrician, no net loss, no problem.
Go from 10 electricians to 9, the net loss will draw a larger response from the union.
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Not a 100% sure if that's a proper sentence, but it's rubbish anyway: the replacement is a new customer.
Unless staffing levels are falling anyway because reasons, in which case there's probably bugger all the union can do about it anyway.
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However, I've never seen a case where the union didn't side with the employee.
That's what makes Amazon's approach a great middle ground. It's difficult to fire union employees unless they are probationary new employees. A manager co-worker of mine will therefore put all her new staff through hell to make damn sure they're not duds before they pass.
The flip side though is that a functioning union combined with attentive management can block the peter principle. Since a promoted probationary employee who fails goes back to their previous position automatically, someone promoted to a
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Sounds like a union. If an employee is fired, they can appeal to the union to get their job back. However, I've never seen a case where the union didn't side with the employee. I'm betting they implemented this process to avoid true unionization.
Considering the number one cause of unionization these days is bad management, sounds like a plan. If the problem really is the manager and not the employee, the coworkers will stick with her. Also sounds similar to what happens in Germany.
"Thunderdome"?? (Score:3, Interesting)
Better watch that movie again. For this to truly be 'thunderdome' ...two (men) enter, one (man) leaves... her boss would have to have some skin in the game too.
Now if she got to argue her case and either she got fired, or her boss got fired and she took his place, THAT would be thunderdome!
Too many airport books. (Score:1)
I can't wait to see how this works out.
It's great to give an employee a chance to change and it's also great to point out a crappy manager/supervisor.
Years ago, a developer decided to go on the management track and he went and read all those airport management books. And having drunk the company Kool-Aid and all excited about climbing the corporate ladder, he worked 12 hour days and became insufferable with his "metrics".
He wrote me up. I took it to another manager and showed him for advice or just a real
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Managerial abuse is rampant in big tech, as every front line engineer knows and has personally witnessed. Somehow, this does not completely bring the industry to its knees, but it certainly slows it down, hence America losing leadership in tech.
Microsoft came up with the "curve" system. Google and others who always envied Microsoft for its monopoly control and fuck you attitude were quick to copy it. Some idealistic employees never saw that, even today. But you would need to be pretty fucking dense to miss
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Because your unemployment insurance rate is related to how many people you fire.
Worth a shot? (Score:2)
> According to a person familiar with the process, the workers who fail to make their case and get their job back can still choose between severance pay or a performance-improvement plan.
So if that piece of information is true, sounds to me like there's no real harm in trying the Thunderdome as you can still choose option 1 or 2. Worth a Hail Mary, you never know, it might land.
The oversight or lack thereof that's birthed such a process though is insane.
Crappy Process (Score:5, Insightful)
After reading the article the outcome seems to be,
How is either of these outcome going to be better for the company or the employee?
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"meaning they can keep their jobs or seek new ones within the company with different bosses""
Re: Crappy Process (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is what makes the entire concept hilarious. It's like doing an experiment in which you don't bother trying to control for outside variables, and when it fails, running it again just in case you might get different results the next time.
Moving the employee to a new team should really be the first step in the process. Then, and only then can you determine whether the performance problem is primarily the employee's fault or the environment's fault (manager, coworkers, project, etc.).
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Moving the employee to a new team should really be the first step in the process. Then, and only then can you determine whether the performance problem is primarily the employee's fault or the environment's fault (manager, coworkers, project, etc.).
No, such a first step presumes the employee is at fault, and must suffer a reassignment to establish they aren't at fault.
Offering an employee the option is entirely different - they can choose to escape a bad situation or work through it,
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No, such a first step presumes the employee is *not* at fault. If the employee is at fault, a reassignment won't change anything, and the employee will get canned. Reassignment as the first step presumes that the manager is the problem, and that the employee will thrive in a new environment, which is usually the case.
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Collective punishment... (Score:4, Funny)
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I didn't fire the guy. His fellow inmates ... I mean cow-orkers ... made that decision.
I choose firing by combat.
Catbert (Score:5, Funny)
This is what Catbert uses to amuse himself.
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There are OBVIOUS conflicts of interest in allowing a "jury" of Amazon workers to judge the case.
It's still better than putting faith in a potentially abusive manager.
This is why we need unions (Score:1)
The primary job of an HR department is to make sure the company doesn't get sued. They don't give a rats ass if your manager is a dick who is expecting you to complete a month's worth of work in a week, unless you start using phrases like "constructive discharge" and make sure to CC the EEOC and any state employment law enforcement agency so they know there's a record. If the HR department thinks they can get away with firing you, even if they know it's illegal, that's what they'll do.
This is why it is impo
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And the employee that loses the thunder dome match still can accept performance goals and keep their job.
Here is my "You will be fired" Letter (Score:4, Informative)
I used to work at Amazon...
Here is my performance review that basically said "Last chance before you are fired"
https://drive.google.com/open?... [google.com]
Note: It is long
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Amazon has a widespread reputation as a hellhole for competent engineers, perhaps the worst in big tech. Interesting that they seem to be making at least a small attempt to do something about it. Google, Apple Facebook and Microsoft have so far not made the slightest attempt. This would indicate that Amazon's brain drain is starting to hurt, and somebody upstairs made the connection between this and upcoming quarterlies.
Re:Here is my "You will be fired" Letter (Score:4, Insightful)
That review is frightening. The manager frames it as if (s)he is doing something good for you and the company, whereas everybody knows that this is just a way to exit an employee without cause. What causes this behavior, is it just pure malice, or is the manager's job in jeopardy if they don't exit X number of employees this way each year? A bit of both?
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My manager had too many people under him after he fired my previous manager and all of us now reported directly to him. He was looking for someone to take on the now vacant spot, and was going to fire people until it happened, or he got the number of people under him to a reasonable level.
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So both malice and self interest, plus mix in liberal doses of narcissism and incompetence. Situation normal. Any info on whether the ass is still there?
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I assume so, given that he has hit his 15th year while I was working there.
I'm now working at Microsoft (Azure). 3 years and going, hopefully I'll survive.
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I'm now working at Microsoft (Azure). 3 years and going, hopefully I'll survive.
Wow, Microsoft a better place to work than Amazon, who woulda thunkit.
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You can thank old "Neutron" Jack Welch of GE fame and the stack ranking system for that crap.
And you can thank Microsoft for bestowing that rust belt stuff on the tech world.
I served at a Pivot 'jury' (Score:4, Informative)
I served at a Pivot jury a couple of times at Amazon. It's not unfair - people are selected randomly for it and from outside of employee's manager chain of command.
In both of the cases the employee was clearly not performing well and I personally haven't seen any evidence of bias. We were not coached to be pro-firing as well.
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Any corporation would do well to fire you, I guess you also can't maintain relationships.
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Any corporation would do well to fire you, I guess you also can't maintain relationships.
Russian belly crawler with mod points detected.
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Remember this guy from 7 years ago? "Noodles is a dictatorship" [youtube.com]
Lord I miss the Occupy protests...
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Oh the horrors, giving people a third option in addition to the "normal" two most people get when they aren't seen as performing in their job.
Protects company from clueless bosses (Score:5, Interesting)
Often, management is relatively clueless about their own operations. They don't always know who the critical members of their team are.
A few years back, I was pushed out of a company because the chief of operations thought I was their weakest developer, and that the actual weakest dev was their rockstar. I was heavily specialized in database and backend coding, which management didn't see as important because they never got client complaints about it. Rather than seeing that as "this dev writes solid code", they saw it as "this dev is slower than Rockstar". Now, Rockstar would push code to production as soon as it compiled, only getting away with it because his main task was endless revisions on a social media network with maybe a dozen users that weren't funding the project, and he constantly relied on other devs to do anything outside his limited skillset (I wrote basically every database query for that project, despite never being assigned to it).
Had there been a "jury of my peers", I'd have been completely vindicated. But, they weren't the type to listen to their peons, let alone ask their opinion. So, out the door I went. And half the company followed in the next year.
Now, in my case, there was no higher level of management, and few people will set up a system to protect their company from their own mistakes. Amazon, however, is big enough to have several layers of management between the ground level and the board room. They can benefit from a mechanism to protect from bad frontline managers' staffing decisions. This is pretty unconventional, and I can see some potential defects in their specific implementation, but the principle seems sound.
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This is pretty unconventional, and I can see some potential defects in their specific implementation, but the principle seems sound.
Like, what? The option to receive severance is always there, you are offered the chance to keep your job (meet performance goals), and you have the chance to debate the merits of your proposed termination. Choosing debate and losing gives you a chance to choose either severance or performance goals, and choosing performance goals and missing them still get you a severance package.
That collection of choices is far greater than those offered almost any employee that I've ever seen let go from a company. The o
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Have the employees give their managers performance reviews, and make the poor performing ones beg for a second chance.
Said the guy that never managed anyone in his career.
A poor review (or handful of poor reviews) is not cause for termination, and many, many companies employ 360 degree performance reviews that have managers being reviewed by their direct reports...
This is the problem (Score:2)
American workforce becoming a swamp of useless spineless drones:
Not the baddest idea, from recent experience (Score:3)
Had a "Jury" decided, no question the outcome would have been different.
Will this be like those secret campus tribunals? (Score:2)
You know, the ones that colleges use to try a man who has sex or who favors a wrongthink hypothesis or is found to have a Republican relative?
Terminated for cause... (Score:3)
If I'm reading this right, and I think I am, the part that everyone appears to be overlooking is that you can choose to receive a severance package when terminated for cause, and if instead of winning the "thunderdome debate" you lose, you still retain the option of accepting the performance package (meet these criteria in this period of time to keep your job) OR the severance package.
First, I've never heard of the average worker getting severance when fired for cause.
Second, why wouldn't you choose to have the video debate? Plead your case, even if you lose, the other two options remain on the table.
Third, this seems like yet another "if Amazon is doing it, it must be bad" articles - if a worker doesn't want to participate, take the package and go. If the worker wants to participate and loses, they can still take the package. The downside is what exactly?
The next time a coworker is fired, ask them if they'll get a severance package, then ask them if they'd like to debate the merits of their termination with their manager, without risking a severance package?
Cause and effect (Score:1)
The one thing that's missing in the process is manager accountability. Managers should have these recorded as part of their performance. If they have multiple decisions going against them in the arbitration process then they're the ones hauled up for unsatisfactory performance.
Without consequences to the managers this is a feel-good process that the company can point to and show that they're willing to 'work' with employees who 'feel they're unfairly singled out'.