Gruntled Employees

Dear [insert name]: You're fired

Our very first post was about RadioShack's submoronic firing of 400 employees last year by email (see "Radio Shack Deletes 400 Workers, Common Sense"). Now, the blogosphere is abuzz with CompUsa's decision to close its remaining stores (see CNNMoney article) and its soulless form letter notifying its employees. The excellent tech blog Engadget included what it describes as a copy of the form letter sent to employees in a biting post, "CompUSA sends out layoff letters: bad service extends to employees, too." Here is the letter, taken from the Engadget post (the store number and location were previously redacted, which is lawyerspeak for blotted out):

Now I can't personally vouch for the authenticity of the letter, and Engadget describes its source as an anonymous CompUSA employee. Nor could I confirm the identity of CompUSA's HR director, although there is an HR person with that name in the DFW metropolitan area. It certainly looks like an authentic WARN Act letter, which the government requires.

But what a letter. I appreciate that CompUSA had a lot of employees to fire, but couldn't they have bothered to insert the unlucky recipient's name in each letter? (You know, guys, they have computers that can do that now.) Did they need to keep reminding the fired worker that CompUSA is incorporated (at least for now) — four times in a three-paragraph letter? Couldn't they get a human being to actually sign the letter? Repeating the name in boldfaced italics doesn't count.

You're firing people. Have the decency to act like it means something to you. It certainly means something to the employees. A personalized letter — or even a seemingly personalized mail-merged special — with a real human being's signature makes a difference. It might not seem like a lot — it might even seem like a waste of time — but people notice these things.

Getting fired sucks. But getting fired suckily (by email, by form letter, during the holidays) sucks even more. Worse, it makes the fired employees more disgruntled, and thus more likely to sue. You've already messed up the big things (running your company into the ground); at least try not to mess up the little things.

Bonus irony note: Check out CompUSA's tagline:

Obviously they didn't get it. They didn't get it at all.

Here are some other voices on the topic:

• Tampa Bay's Channel 10 News has a story on the company's remarkable retention-bonus scheme: if you work the next two months until the store closes, you get — wait for it — a whole week's pay! (Woo.) The station has posted a PDF of the "Separation Bonus Plan"; the story is here: "Employees cry foul over CompUSA closings"
• The incomparable New York Times technology columnist David Pogue had this explanation for the company's failure back when they began their store closings last March: "The Gutting of CompUSA."
• The always excellent HR Capitalist has this great post on how another stumbling company, Circuit City, tried to lure back some of their previously fired, higher-paid workers at a lower wage: "Circuit City - We Fired You, Please Present This Coupon to Get Your Old Job Back for Less Pay..."
• That particular move garnered Circuit City a spot on the Fortune "Top 101 Dumbest Moments in Business 2007."

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[Updated 20 December 2007 to clarify the Circuit City references, and to add more on what CompUSA could have done right. Big shout out to Martin Ebel, the top Commonwealth of Massachusetts civil-rights lawyer and frequent Gruntled commenter (which is different from a commentator). Another big shout out to Christopher Mirabile, world-class general counsel, for pointing out the Engadget post.]

Email and the environment

I, like you, get too much email. Just a few weeks ago, I got to the extreme of having 10,000 (an actual number, not an example of hyperbole) emails in my in box. Which is not useful. What is more, as the newer emails fell off the bottom of my mail-app window, it was as if they no longer really existed (I still had them, I just couldn't see them, and therefore probably wouldn't do anything about them). I can see why noted Stanford Law professor Lawrence Lessig declared "email bankruptcy" awhile back.

(In fact, I found a better solution at 43 Folders, the blog of lifehacker extraordinaire Merlin Mann. It's called the Inbox Zero method, and it totally rocks. Everything you need to know is here. The video of Merlin's lecture at Google alone is worth the price of admission. OK, admission is free, but you get my drift.)

Anyway, speaking of email, I'm starting to notice that more people are including in their email footer the following message:

Please consider the environment before printing this email.

(It's not usually in green like that. I just did it that way for ironic effect.) The thinking being that the pithy admonition will, as it spreads across the world like a virus, eventually spare a forest or two from being unnecessarily felled. The message has spawned many reactions in the blogosphere. Many are quaint — "My friend, who is soooo green, has this great little email signature ..." Like the guy cured polio or something. Some reactions are less admiring, and often more amusing; see Trying My Patience, for example. Freakonomics coauthor Stephen J. Dubner poked fun at the tagline when it was used in an email that was selling private-jet travel. Because that will help lessen your carbon footprint.

But I have to admit that when I first saw the tagline, I misunderstood its point. The email that carried the tag related to an employment-discrimination case I was working on, so I thought the author was saying, "Consider the office environment if you print it out because someone might read it." I was thinking litigation, not conservation. And while the environmentally sensitive message is a valid one (and we should all stop reflexively printing out emails that we're going to save on our hard drives), the litigationally sensitive message that I inferred is equally valid.

And really, the bigger message should be: "Please consider the office environment before you even send this email." Because 13 years of litigating employment cases have shown me that emails lose lawsuits. All the time. People write the stupidest things in their emails because they think they're having an informal electronic conversation with their buddies. But unlike a face-to-face colloquy, where the words evaporate after they're spoken, emails live forever. And lawyers can find them later. And lawyers will find them. And they will beat you with them.

Make sure you train your employees and managers about the dangers of email. Tell them not to say anything in an email that anyone will find offensive. Because you can't control what happens to your words after you hit "Send." Save the potentially offensive things for private, face-to-face conversations. Or, you know, maybe avoid the whole offensive bit in the first place.

Oh, and please consider the environment before printing this post.

Shaking the trees

First a note: It's a standard trick in the blogosphere that you can cover up your inexcusable failure to post for ... well ... a while (what do you mean I missed November?) by doing a handy site redesign. Thus the new site design. In truth, the standard TypePad theme that this blog wore for more than a year was getting a little threadbare. It was time for something a little cleaner and more ... gruntled. (OK, no more ellipses.) That said, you can expect some tweaking over the next few weeks. As always, I appreciate your feedback. And if you're reading this by email or RSS reader, click here to see the new design.

Now the real post:

We're hiring another lawyer at Shepherd Law Group right now, so we've been conducting interviews and meeting a lot of potential new associates. Which means shaking a lot of hands. Some shake well, and some shake less well. Turns out there's a skill to it. Maybe even a science.

As reported in BusinessWeek recently, a firm handshake is a sign of "social dominance." Psychologist Gordon Gallup found that men with firm handshakes were more likely to behave aggressively. They were also more likely to have broad shoulders and narrow hips, and they were 10% more promiscuous. (Unclear whether that was because of the shoulder-hip thing, the aggressiveness thing, or the handshake thing.)

Gallup's study found no correlation between women's handshakes and either their "behavioral competitiveness" or body type.

Gallup hails from the State University of New York at Albany, which you probably call "SUNY Albany" but which apparently prefers "UAlbany" as its "officially designated informal name," because nobody told them that you can't officially designate an informal anything. In the money quote from the university's press release, Gallup makes a connection between handshakes and our evolution from tree-climbing monkeys:

Unique to the evolutionary history of humans and all primates were complex adaptations to life in the trees. As a result, handgrip strength was featured prominently in patterns of brachiating, or moving through the canopy, as well as in minimizing the chances of falling.

Uh, okay. The press release is here, and the full report (which only uses the word "brachiation" once) is here. (It's a form of arboreal locomotion, in case you were wondering.)

Coincidentally, and more relevantly to the workplace, The Boston Globe recently reviewed a new book by Tonya Reiman called The Power of Body Language. Apparently, the book has a lot say about handshakes. I haven't read it yet, but see this from Vivianne Rodrigues's review:

The handshake is one of the most critical opportunities to establish rapport and might be as crucial for job applicants as a strong résumé, Reiman said.

Her book lists no less than 12 "wrong" ways to shake hands including the submissive handshake, the overly affectionate, the sweaty, the forward lean, but none as dreaded and as dreadful as the limp handshake.

"The limp handshake feels like you're holding a lump of room-temperature chicken," she said.

The way that will work with any person in any situation, according to Reiman, is to go toward the person, lean slightly forward, look them in the eye, extend the right hand, and simultaneously introduce yourself. The whole handshake should not last more than two to three seconds.

Sounds about right. So my question for you HR pros and managers: are your employees shaking hands properly, or they falling out of the trees (so to speak)?