Dear Boss,
I have always thought of my workplace as one where people didn’t get fired unless they were obviously and consistently bad at their job. I have been here for six years, and I know that when we get the “good-bye to so-and-so” emails from HR about people unexpectedly leaving, that probably means they were fired. When people leave because they got a new job or otherwise leave on good terms, they usually announce it themselves with their final date of employment listed so we can wrap up any projects, and they typically include lots of thank-yous and appreciation for their co-workers. So when the news comes from HR without any advance notice, I assume it was probably a firing. Based on what I know about how our company is run, I also assume the fired people probably had been warned or otherwise had known that their performance wasn’t up to par. And while I haven’t been privy to details, when it’s happened in the past, I haven’t ever been surprised.
However, in the last couple of weeks, two employees were (I assume) let go about a week apart from each other. I don’t think either of their firings had to do with the other. We got the typical emails from HR saying the company has ended their relationship with each person, contact their manager for project questions, and we wish them the best. What has me thrown is that both of these people were, in my opinion, stellar co-workers who had been with the company for years, one almost for a decade.
This workplace is low drama, low gossip, and what I would consider healthy. But this has thrown people into a tizzy. One of the fired people is the cousin of a current employee, and I think a lot of folks want to ask her about it. I don’t know if anyone has. But everyone is really confused, and personally I am worried! What could have happened to these seemingly high-performing employees to have caused them to lose their jobs? And who could be next?
So, my question is, what kind of questions are appropriate to ask, and to whom? Do I just need to accept that the people who make firing decisions know what they’re doing and have their reasons? Is it ever appropriate to ask why someone was fired and to express that it’s making me nervous? I know I’m not alone in this, and the whole episode has caused our quiet company to descend into gossip and fear because we don’t get it. What is the best course of action here, if any?
It’s definitely true that when someone is fired, the news often doesn’t come as a surprise to their colleagues. People who work with them may have seen signs that their work wasn’t up to par or that they were struggling with the job in some way. If you have direct experience with a co-worker repeatedly making mistakes, missing deadlines, or being unresponsive, and then they leave the company abruptly, it can be pretty easy to guess what happened — and to avoid being rattled by it.
But in other cases, the reasons might not be obvious to colleagues. Sometimes, a team member will have struggled in ways that weren’t as visible to their co-workers, especially to people they didn’t work with closely.
A firing also can be unrelated to the quality of someone’s work — think of people who get fired for serious policy violations (anything from accessing porn at work to embezzling).
That’s not to say that every firing is warranted. Some companies do fire people for unfair reasons. For example, because the person wasn’t able to meet unrealistic expectations, or spoke up a bit too frequently when they disagreed with management decisions, or simply had the bad luck to have a boss who personally disliked them. And sometimes the issues were legitimate but could have been solved with a reasonable amount of coaching or better training.
Regardless of the circumstances, employers generally don’t share the reason an employee is fired; terminations are typically on a need-to-know basis. Most of the time, that’s the right way to handle it; personnel issues generally should be confidential because people deserve privacy when something goes wrong professionally. And, of course, employees who get warned that their jobs are in jeopardy if they don’t improve generally don’t share that information widely. That discretion from both sides can make a firing seem out of the blue to bystanders, even when it wasn’t.
But that can leave colleagues like you wondering what happened, and worrying about whether you might ever be treated unfairly yourself or blindsided by a firing you didn’t see coming.
The best thing managers can do to combat that is to be transparent about how they handle performance problems in general. For example, it’s useful for managers to share that anyone whose work isn’t up to par will receive clear feedback and, if things progress to the point that their job is in jeopardy, they’ll be clearly warned and given time to improve so a firing should never come as a surprise. Employers should also have clear, written policies explaining each step in the process they use before letting someone go. However, for that to be credible, companies need to establish cultures where employees trust that those policies will be followed fairly and where they see managers giving clear, regular, and reasonable feedback and operating in an equitable and ethical way.
So, as an employee watching from the sidelines and who doesn’t know exactly what happened with your two abruptly departing co-workers, what do you know about how your company operates generally, as well as those two employees’ managers in particular? Do you know them to typically be fair and transparent? Or is it easy to believe that they might make unfair or arbitrary decisions? Reflecting on that might put you more at ease, or it might reinforce that you’re right to worry.
Most of the time, you shouldn’t ask directly why someone was fired — that’s not really your business, and your manager might not be able to share it (and might not even know the backstory if she didn’t manage them) — but there’s still a way to talk to your boss about your concerns. For example, you could say that you were surprised to see those two colleagues leave so abruptly because you’d always had good experiences working with them, that it has raised questions for you about how firings work in your company, and that you’re wondering how much warning your company gives to people whose jobs are in danger. You could also say, “I really value candid feedback and would want to know if you ever had serious concerns about my work so I could have the opportunity to improve.”
Your manager’s response to this might reassure you or it might not. Either way, you should come away from this conversation with more information — whether it’s more insight into how your company and your manager handle performance problems, or greater clarity about the fact that there’s not a fair, consistent system in place (which, while not the outcome you want, would still be useful to know).
It’s also worth considering how much feedback you get from your boss in general, and how strong a sense you have of how she thinks you’re doing. If she is not confident about where you stand with her, take that as a cue to start asking for more feedback. If you periodically talk about how she thinks you’re doing and where you can work on improving, you’ll have less reason to worry about being blindsided by a negative assessment.
Ultimately, though, what you want to determine is whether you trust your management to act fairly and in good faith. And while you might never know the details of these two specific firings, you’ll likely have a good idea of whether you trust your company to act fairly in general.
Find even more career advice from Alison Green on her website, Ask a Manager. Got a question for her? Email [email protected] (and read our submission terms here).