The shortage of skilled workers continues to be a challenge in many sectors. Nevertheless, there will continue to be restructuring and staff reductions - whether intentional or not. This creates a challenging dilemma: downsizing combined with a shortage of skilled workers. There are various ways of tackling this challenge. One meShow postA human-centered, appreciative separation culture is one of them.
Separations are among the most difficult management tasks. They occur for a variety of reasons. Despite protection under employment law and attractive severance packages, the outcome of separations remains uncertain in most cases.
Our experts have developed a fair and respectful approach to separation processes and how companies can establish a separation culture. Michael Hasler and Abdullah Redzepi in an article for KMU-Magazin. According to the two experts, these steps in particular are crucial:
Preparing and making decisions
The initial situation needs to be analyzed - are there alternatives to termination or employment law conditions that still need to be clarified? Who is directly or indirectly affected by the separation? Can the decision be made with a view to downsizing?
Prepare implementation
How should the decision be communicated? Communication must be swift, comprehensive, uniform and transparent. It is important to convey the message through transparency, honesty in the information, responsiveness and taking individual concerns into account.
It is also important to clarify the roles in the separation process, as professional preparation for a termination meeting and support for the survivors is essential. It can also be helpful to plan a catch-up meeting with external support for the termination meeting in order to prevent escalation.
Newplacement can also be offered: In contrast to severance pay, outplacement is more sustainable for those made redundant because it helps with reorientation and offers support in a difficult situation.
Implement separation
After all, it is managers who give notice of termination to the terminated employees. The manager should inform those affected personally and in an appreciative manner and not first inform them of the intention to separate on the part of the company and/or HR.
After discussing the termination, managers work with HR and those affected to clarify issues such as remaining leave, transfer of know-how, etc. and prepare for the remaining time in the company until the employee leaves.
Learning from the separation
The process of a separation should be solidly prepared in advance, monitored during the process and evaluated in the same way afterwards. The key here is for management to ask itself the following questions in collaboration with HR: Was the preparation solid? Did the implementation of the separation go according to plan? In which sub-processes could we have done better? What are we doing to avoid such situations in future?
In this way, the lessons learned from the evaluation are derived and the separation process is sustainably optimized. A solid follow-up of the separation process is just as essential in terms of sustainably anchoring a separation culture as the clean preparation phase and the professional handling of the separation itself.
In conclusion, it can be said that personnel change processes and separations are part of a constantly changing working environment. In order to ensure that decision-makers and former employees can still look each other in the eye later on despite the separation, it is essential to know how to deal with each other during the separation process and how to say goodbye. After all, a separation should end the contract, not the employee's future.
Here you can read the entire article in KMU-Magazin, which also takes a closer look at survivors - those left behind after a separation. Download SME article
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