Trainees sacked via message left on voicemail
By Elizabeth Hughes in In the News on Saturday, June 27, 2009
According to news reports, trainees at international law firm, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, learned they were not being retained by the firm, following completion of their 2 year training contract, after HR managers left messages with the bad news on trainees' answering machines.
Trainees were told “It’s not good news but give us a call.”
Due to the effects of the recession, only 34 out of 48 trainees were told that they would have a permanent job at the end of their training contract. Of those who were not offered a permanent position, many were told face-to-face, but some were unavailable and so the messages were left for them to pick up.
Kevin Hogarth, global HR director at the firm, said “…in hindsight, leaving an answer-phone message was not a good judgement call by the team involved” and said the firm would be updating its policy to find the most effective way to deliver news to staff about the outcome.
I understand that the firm wanted trainees to find out via “official” channels as opposed to hearing rumours on the grapevine but why were individual appointments not made with the trainees involved so that the news could be broken and the reasons explained fully? Surely that would have been the preferred course of action, rather than leaving them to put two and two together once they had heard the message.
Do you have a policy for breaking bad, or indeed good, news to staff? Do you always do it face-to-face or do you think there are acceptable exceptions?
Roger Baldwin wrote:
Could this be classed as a Repudiatory breach of contract when the message was sent? Could the timing be important such as the date the message was sent or the date it was read or the date it was acknowledged by the Employee as in view of the Gisda v Barratt case (a discrimination case) acceptance of a repudiatory breach does not have to be communicated to be effective