How to terminate employment with honor and dignity

You can fire people without devastating their self-respect. You can dismiss employees from their jobs while respecting their dignity as human persons. You can retrench, declare redundancy, lay off and terminate employment, and yet remain as friends with them. I have proven all these by actual immersion and solid experience of 27 years as a human resources and labor relations executive in the leading business conglomerates and 28 years in government as conciliator, mediator, arbitrator, and undersecretary of DOLE. I know whereof I speak.

A book I have written and published has the same title as this column and it is one of my best-sellers. First of all, we do not terminate employees, we terminate employment or services. Terminating people is murder and it is punishable by life sentence. But terminating employment is allowed by law, subject to strict protocols on due process and the very exacting demands for substantive causes, whether just or authorized by law. Based on my 15 years’ experience as director for Labor and Employee Relations of San Miguel Corp., five years as vice president for HR, Legal and Corporate Affairs of Pepsi Cola Philippines, and another five years as senior labor attorney and HR director of PNOC and Petron, I gained so much insight on human behavior as reconciled with the law.

Honor in termination means that we do not destroy the character of employees whom we dismiss, even if they have committed some reprehensible offenses and grievous wrongs. We do not besmirch their reputation, despite the gravity of the damage he or she has caused to the company. And we do treat the facts about the case in utmost confidentiality and professionalism. We do not tell people around the details of what they actually did to others who do not have a reason to inquire and know. We do not publish the faces of the employees being dismissed because the world does not need to know what actually happened. The single despicable act or failure to act attributable to them after so many years they worked with us faithfully and well should remain wrapped in dignified confidentiality.

Dignity means that we want people to come out of our organization with their self-esteem and self-respect intact and unblemished. We condemned the acts but we remain respectful to the people. We separate the actions from the persons. People have families, they have friends and communities. It is not fair that they would lose face before the people who love them and care for them.

We have the professional duty to hold in strict confidence whatever we know about the deeds and errors, faults and misbehaviors of dismissed employees and officers. Dignity means continuing respect for people even after they have done their worst. Termination of employment could be very traumatic and even devastating. We should not exacerbate the pains and anguish by revealing certain sensitive information.

Honorable termination and dignified disengagement is like a friendly divorce or an amicable annulment of marriage where the parties have reached a point beyond reconciliation and yet they remain civil, polite, and even friendly to each other. Thus in termination, the employer is duty-bound to pay all the unpaid salaries, the encashment of all unused vacation and sick leaves, the reimbursement of official expenses, the proportionate thirteenth month pay and all other payables. The dismissed, separated, or retired employees must also get the needed clearance from all money and property accountability. They should turn over all keys, laptops, cellphones and other gadgets they had been holding in trust. They should prepare a turn-over memo whereby they should list down all unfinished tasks and pending projects and liquidate all cash advances.

When an employee is dismissed or separated, he should be allowed to go without stigma or trauma. Dismissal is only a legal process but the relationship built and the friendships that had been developed shall remain. He or she is entitled by law to a certificate of employment and the company is entitled to a certificate of quitclaim and release. Litigations should be avoided because they are lose/lose propositions. Beyond the employment relations, there is no need to burn the bridges or to close the door. Who knows, there may yet be a second time around.