Dirty Work: Firing Consultant
Consultants Help Teach the Fine Art of Firing Workers

 Listen to David Molpus' report.

 Back to the Dirty Work series

Marlyn Kalitan, VP of career management consulting at Right Management Consultants, conducts a workshop to educate corporate managers on firing employees. Photo courtesy Right Management Consultants Inc.

"We need to go through the pain of sitting with the [people losing their jobs] and spend time trying to answer whatever questions they may have." Irene Wong, VP for human resources at Invensys Power Systems.

Aug. 15, 2002 -- There are names for people responsible for firing other people. They're called "hatchet men" or "corporate executioners." The workplace is replete with tales of firings by e-mail, or while on vacation, with no sensitivity to the human wreckage involved.

NPR's David Molpus reports on the experiences of employees, managers and firing consultants as part of Morning Edition's series on "dirty work."

Marguerite Nutter vividly remembers her layoff from a non-profit in the South. "They sent this woman guard down," Nutter said. "She told me to leave the building. I said 'let me just collect a few things and say goodbye to a few people.' They said, 'No, you need to come now.' They made me feel like a criminal."

So how do managers fire people and still sleep at night? How do they make the process less difficult for themselves and employees?

Many companies hire people like firing consultant Howard McCain. McCain spends his days helping companies in three states carry out the firing of employees. He says there is an art to dismissing someone.

McCain says doing it the right way involves detailed planning on how to deliver the message, letting employees know ahead of time that their jobs are at risk and offering hope about the future.

And it doesn't end there. His company, Right Management, also typically provides outplacement services to help laid off workers find their next job in addition to guiding the termination process. McCain takes satisfaction in making firings consistent and "more humane."

"I find it very fulfilling to be in this business," McCain says. "We may be the bright spot in an otherwise bad day for that employee."

Irene Wong knows about the difficulty of firing employees. She is the vice president of Human Resources for Invensys Power Systems, a technology conglomerate, and has been involved in firing thousands of workers. Her company has worked with Right Management.

She prepares her managers for the emotional venting by employees, and tells them to be empathetic but never to "imply you understand what they are going through because you don't."

Wong takes layoffs personally, seeing them as "a failure by top management." She says the layoffs are happening because of "errors in our judgment about the economy, production, location, skill-sets."

And she is not alone. Richard Levin, an executive coach in the Boston area, says many of the CEOs he works with find the firing part of their job exhausting. Some, he says, even reach a point where they can't do it anymore -- and quit.

Other Resources

• Right Management Consultants, an international consulting firm that helps prepare managers to carry out layoffs and firings in 35 countries.

• Invensys Power Systems, a London-based conglomerate with offices in Research Triangle Park, N.C.

• The Society for Human Resource Management.

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