CareerBuilder did the research and came up with 10 possible reasons:

1. The person has a good relationship with someone higher up.  By relationship, we mean family, romance, friendship, etc.
2. The boss relies on the employee and is somehow more inclined to attribute the employee’s bad performance to factors outside of that employee’s control.
3. Everything taken into consideration, the employee brings more than he or she costs.
4. What if replacing that person ends up being worse?  In other words, what if management isn’t sure it can find someone better?
5. The boss is afraid of the employee.
6. The boss doesn’t want to be hurtful (has sympathy for the employee).
7. It may be easier to deal with the current employee than having to go through a hiring process, meaning screening, training, and integrating someone new.
8. The employee knows something (either about the boss or has expertise that just can’t be replaced).
9. The employee has everybody fooled.  In other words, he/ she is a good talker and always find his/ her way out of a bad situation.
10. Maybe the person is not such a bad employee after all…

Why Bad Employees Don’t Get Fired, CareerBuilder/ CNN

The BBC has a 2 billion-pound gap and the solution found to this problem was to tell its employees to reapply for their own jobs. I would have thought that big institutions such as the BBC would have been safe from these kinds of reshuffles, but guess not - 2,000 posts are expected to be cut.

Apply for Your Jobs, BBC Stars Told, Times Online

Marshall Loeb, from MarketWatch, wrote an article on how managers should treat people when they are fired. Horror stories abound and it leads us to wonder whether there is humanity left in some people. Following are some do’s and don’ts:

Don’t:

• Don’t let it come as a surprise. Give warnings to the employee so he/ she can change.
• Don’t let others do what you should be the one doing, meaning that if you’re the one who made the decision to fire the employee, you should be the one letting that person know as opposed to letting HR do the job for you.
• If the company has a protocol regarding job dismissals, don’t ignore it.
• Don’t tell the employee you fired that you’ll help him/ her unless you really can.

Do:

• Be kind. Even if it goes beyond what company protocol requires you to do.
• Give constructive feedback. Nowadays, some companies have policies not to reveal the reason(s) why employees are let go because of the risks of a lawsuit. If that is the case, do the best that you can while staying within company parameters.
• Have the money ready in case the employee is in a money crunch.

The job dismissal process is not over when the person is let go. The people who remain are also affected by the process. That is something to keep in mind.

Have a Heart When Firing Employees, MarketWatch