Thursday, August 31, 2006

Workers terminated via email and text messages

U R fired :(

RadioShack employees at the Fort Worth headquarters received an e-mail Tuesday morning telling them they were laid off, effective immediately. Management experts expressed surprise at the company's use of electronic notification instead of face-to-face meetings with supervisors. Click here to read the story. In the interest of balance, lick HERE to check out RadioShack's recruitment page.

Meanwhile, an employer in the U.K. has taken electronic firing to another level. It decided to "sack-by-text message" when it terminated a store worker. The worker's cell phone beeped, giving her the bad news. According to The Associated Press, the "company defended the sacking-by-text message as a way to keep modern."

USA Today invited readers to share their own stories about getting "sacked." Click here to read their comments.


Via: Scatterbox by Steven Silvers


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9 comments:

Urban Daddy said...

Right in the middle of reading this post, my email beeped.

I reluctantly opened Outlook to see what is said.

... spam.

whew

Deb Sistrunk Nelson said...

SpeakEasy: "Whew" is right! :-)
Thanks for stopping by. You have a great site.

Ian Lidster said...

O-brave new world. This captures it perfectly and disquietingly. Maybe it's cowardly new world?
Thanks,
Ian

Deb Sistrunk Nelson said...

Ian: "Cowardly new world"? I think that phrase tells it like it really is!

Deb Sistrunk Nelson said...

Alina! I laughed so hard when I read your comment. LOL! If you heard screaming laughter in Romania, now you know where it was coming from. And we thought that you were so shy and quiet. ;-)

Seriously, though, I agree with you. The employers were disrespectful and acted cowardly. I just hope this isn't the beginning of a trend.

RadioShack certainly isn't lacking in legal counsel, so I guess the company attorneys signed off on this. But when it comes to business ethics, I think RadioShack damaged its reputation.

Alina said...

Deb, I am pretty sure they damaged their reputation given any kind of ethics, moral, or basic common sense :). Glad you enjoyed the comment :D

Anonymous said...

That's low, even for a corporation...
Feel bad for the employees.

Deb Sistrunk Nelson said...

TechZ: Perhaps this is the beginning of a new case study in corporate communications/employee relations. I wouldn't want to be the PR department trying to clean this up!

Anonymous said...

True Deb! And thanks for dropping by my site :)

After so many years, workers revolution et al, you'd think the labor force for any organization would be respected more...but with the advent of technology, that human factor of feeling has been removed now, so emotions are set aside and workers treated like just another expense. We seem to have moved backwards, rather than progressed.