Why your company wants you to resign

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(MoneyWatch) Dear Evil Hr Lady,

I was told my position was being eliminated last week -- the day before I was leaving for vacation. They are not offering a severance package, and I am able to work for them for three months while I look for another position. They also said that they will treat it as a resignation, and that is what they will tell the rest of the staff.

 If I secure another job, then I can leave prior to October 31. This really bothers me, as I have had good reviews and have not been told my performance was poor. In fact, I have achieved all departmental goals for the year before the third quarter was completed. The only thing that I can think of is that the day before they let me go, I completed a grant project that I had been working on. They did mention money was an issue, but I am probably the lowest paid people in the office. I do not care that they let me go -- I just prefer not to lie to the rest of the staff, and I would prefer to leave now and collect a three-month severance package. 

The way it is now, I have to go work there everyday knowing I am leaving. It is uncomfortable, and I feel used and taken advantage of. I also will not be able to collect unemployment if they say I "resigned." Any advice on how I should proceed? I have thought about contacting an employment lawyer, but I also thought it might be a waste of time.  

It sounds like they are laying you off. You're not being terminated because of poor performance. They are likely ending your job because of financial reasons. And companies who are ending employment for financial reasons hate, with a burning passion, paying for unemployment.

Now, you may think that unemployment is a state benefit, so why would your employer care? Because even though the state writes the checks, the companies pay for it (generally through a tax) that varies depending on how many of their former employees qualify for jobless benefits. They hope you'll resign so they won't have to pay unemployment. Another trick companies use is creating some trumped up reason for firing you. If you're fired for cause, you're not eligible for unemployment either.

You should know, however, that it's possible to collect unemployment even if the stated reason for termination is "resignation." You have to apply for unemployment. The company will be given the opportunity to object, and then each side will have a chance to present their case. They will show the letter of "resignation" that they wrote and you signed. You will need to present proof that it was their idea.

That means you should get any related communications in writing. Forward any emails you've received on this to your personal email account as soon as possible. 

While coming to work is awkward, and you feel like you're lying to your coworkers (who, by the way, don't have a right to know why you are leaving), everyone is likely to deduce that you are being terminated. People don't resign three months in advance without big plans lined up. 

But having your co-workers know you're being laid off (which is what's going on here) is still awkward. And while it's painful for you, it does give you one big advantage -- it's easier to find a job when you have a job. Being able to put the dates on your resume as "January 2009-Present" looks a heck of a lot better than "January 2009-August 2012." With the latter you get a bunch of questions about why are not working anymore. And while there is no shame in being laid off (it happens to, honestly, the best of people), some companies just do not hire the unemployed.

Now, can you ask for severance in lieu of working those last three months? Of course. Will they give it to you? Hard to say. My guess is no, since your company is trying to make it look like you resigned. Do I recommend it? No. Painful though it may be, your chances of finding a good new job are lessened by being unemployed, even though you have more time to devote to searching for work.

So my advice is to smile, work through it, and devote as much time and effort as possible to finding a new job. If you don't have one by the time October rolls around, gather your documentation and apply for unemployment anyway. Chances are you'll get it.

Have a workplace dilemma? Send your questions to [e-mail].

For further reading:

Forced to resign: What are your options?
Why I quit my job without a new one lined up
Can you be fired for working through lunch?

[tramky]

This piece demonstrates once again how truly terrible the current American job market really is. It is pathological--dreadful, in fact. I especially note the comments about companies that will not hire anyone without a job. I want--no, I DEMAND--to know the NAMES of those companies. Why? For ACCOUNTABILITY. Since they obviously believe they can trash the lives & aspirations of actual people, I DEMAND to be given the knowledge about their identitiy so that I can trash the aspirations of THOSE companies--by working to ensure that good prospective employees do NOT apply for jobs at those companies, or accept a job if offered one; and to actively work to undermine the work of their sales force by refusing to buy their product(s) or patronize their services.

As for the apologists and rationalizers of these miscreant employers, go pound dust.

[marketmymark]

roflmao....yeah, CBS News will comply with your "demand"....ha ha ha haaa!!!!

How about you go and do your own research....pathetic

[kkimberly2004]

The question wasn't answered as to if she should get a lawyer and my answer is yes!

[angelosdaughter]

A similar thing happened to me, although I did get severance of 3 months. I accidentally found out that my position at my workplace of almost 33 years was being eliminated before I was supposed to know. For almost 3 months until I was formally told, I had to come in and pretend nothing was wrong. That was one of the hardest things I have ever had to do. I was 60 years old at the time and have arthritis in both knees. During the time and after my severance ran out,I looked diligently and unsuccessfully(ageism is alive and well; if you also limp, you are really at a disadvantage) for a job. About 3 months before my unemployment ran out, I also filed for disability. Just as my employment ran out, I was granted the disability. I consider myself fortunate. Good luck to you.

[[e-mail]]

Hope you vote Democrat....only thing that has provided you an income as you go through this troubling stage in your life.

[dustin93sc]

A state agency in Harrisburg recently lost three civil service employees due to budget deficiency and need to down-size the general payroll. This so-called supervisor, Rita Rellick insisted on harassing three women out of the office and then absorb other government salaries (the new three are men).

[askagain]

It is sometimes easier to eliminate a whole department or division to avoid being accused of discrimination. The problem with that is good employees are terminated along with less capable or productive employees. In my case, as a small employer, I want tp keep the truly productive and capable employees even if they are earning higher salaries. One great industrialist, Andrew Carnegie once said, "Take away my factories, my plants, take away my railroads, my ships, my transportation; take away my money, strip me of all these, but leave me my men and in two or three years, I will have them all again." Although it may not be that easy, we get the gist of his statement.

[jgnv]

As a former employee of a large company who was laid off last fall, I witnessed to systematic elimination of management and hourly positions over a period of 6-12 months. Ultimately, those who remained were advised their shortened 32 hr work week would be restored to 40 hrs. While it's regrettable that this is happening at companies everywhere, I think it is something we all must accept and move on with our lives as best we can. Many jobs will not be refilled even if the economic conditions improve, as companies are streamlining their operations through technology. I also think we will see a trend in the future where middle management positions will become obsolete. If you're young and anticipate having a long, successful career and remain competitive in today's job market, it's essential to continually expand your education and skills. For those of us that are too old to anticipate being offered a full-time position, there are numerous organizations that truely appreciate the time and effort volunteers contribute.

[askagain]

As an employer, I have experience the gamut from excellent employees to lazy and incompetent employees. Some employees always give their best and are dedicated and conscientious. Other employees seem to be hoping that they will be fired. There is no one size solution that works well. It also seems like the benefit of the doubt usually goes to the terminated employee. Employers often end up with higher unemployment insurance premiums even when the employee deserves to be terminated.

[tmittelstaed]

[continued]

The companies doing the "your going to leave in 3 months and we will call it a resignation" are trying to say that you worked really well and they don't want you to be penalized, but they need you to leave. I've seen these sitations where the employee under the 3 month mark spends most of her or his time not even in the office, but instead out on intervews or out looking, and the company turns a blind eye. And if the company does it right and their HR knows what they are doing, then when the calls come in for job references the company pretends that they didn't know the employee was planning to leave or even looking around.

Employees in this situation who are smart do the following:

1) tell NOBODY, tell NO coworkers of the situation and if a coworker gets a reference check call, and asks you "are you looking around" then say you are but please don't tell anyone particularly your boss. If you feel some sort of loyalty to your coworkers then tell them over coffee AFTER the 3 months is over and your actually out the door.

The only time you publicize this is if they are literally laying off 1/2 of the company.

2) Make sure HR and your boss who knows about the situation knows to answer any reference check call with a "I didn't know she was thinking of leaving"

3) Have a friend call in during the day pretending to make a reference call to make sure that the boss or coworkers are indeed answering the way they are supposed to BEFORE handing out names as references. If your boss disses you or answers in any way other than to give you a glowing reference, then have a little "chat" with your boss, and remind him that they want you eased out without causing trouble and that isn't going to happen if they give you bad references. if your coworker reference unexpectedly disses you then it's a good thing you checked before handing out her name as a reference, now, wasn't it? Don't invite her out for drinks with the rest of the gang when you have your quitting party.

Of course, most companies have a policy that reference calls must not be responded to by anyone but HR. And of course, a reference response by HR is completely worthless to a hiring employer.

Trust me, as a hiring employer I don't give a rat's patootie about following your company's policies, you don't pay my salary. I'll keep calling back until I get one of your employees to give me a reference check. And trust me I'll get someone.

4) do not sign anything saying your resigning. If your boss is pushing you about signing this or offers to play nice if you sign it, then recognize that you probably won't be able to trust them to give a decent reference so your screwed anyway. Just refuse to sign it and tell them: how am I going to trust that you will give out good references on me - if I sign that you won't have any incentive to do so, if I don't sign it then that is my insurance that your going to give out a good reference. Don't be afraid to play hardball, they aren't. The fact is that if they won't give you good references unless you sign a resignation document, then they might as well fire you now.

5) get going immediately on the job search and assume that in 3 months your going to be dumped. Your job search must be your top priority now, more important than doing a good job at your current employer. Don't feel guilty about spending the day writing your Resume, or making LD calls on their phones or using their photocopier or printer.

6) don't take it personally and recognize that this is essentially a win situation for you. On one hand you get to find another job while your working, and you get to have glowing references from the people your currently working with. You also get paid to look for a job for yourself, and you get access to a completely stocked office for 3 months while you do it.

7) Last, if you can't find a job then file unemployment the day after your last day and fight for it. AND KEEP LOOKING

In summary, YOU are in the power position here, not your current employer. It is worth more to them to have you go quietly without trouble then it is to you, so you can get a lot out of them in exchange.

[AAnnie52]

Amen to all of the above. Happened to me (except they didn't try to force a "resignation.") I worked an additional 3 weeks (end of month) and did finagle a severance package worth a week for every year employed (22.) One point to add: keep a journal of who said what, when, and if there were any witnesses to same. Presumably you will have been keeping copies of evaluations as well. I did some freelance work after leaving, then found another job to tide me over until retirement. I kiss some of my co-workers but not the poisonous work atmosphere.

[tmittelstaed]

This article and most of these comments are incredibly stupid. I am a business owner with employees. Trust me it's cheaper to pay a higher unemployment tax than to continue to pay their wages. A LOT cheaper.

Of course there are exploitive employers who try gaming the system to get the employee to not file for unemployment. But I think those are in the minority. For starters the unemployment office almost always sides with the employee no matter what. I've heard stories of employees who were fired on the spot for theft and still got unemployment - when the business owner protested the unemployment dept said "since you didn't call the cops and file charges they must not have been stealing"

I think the majority of employers these days do this because they truthfully want to do as much as they can to launch the outgoing employee into another job. Most of the managers who fire employees don't have a financial stake in the company - they aren't owners or stockholders - and they don't give a rat's patootie that the company writes a bigger check to the unemployment dept. And most managers have been "laid off" before and know how hard it is to find another job when your unemployed.

Also word of mouth gets around, too. If you become known in your town as a nasty employer the best people aren't going to apply to work at your company, and if they do apply they are going to suss you out during the interview. Nowadays with facebook and Google a job candidate can find out all about how bad or good you have been, they don't need to call Santa to tell them if your on the naughty or nice list anymore. Also, you better believe it but the best candidates are going to be calling and talking to your employees if you offer them a job.

Oh sure, if your incredibly stupid you will say you don't care that you can get by with cheap second stringers or your going to assume the recession means it's a buyers market for employees. That is true only for ordinary employees. It isn't true for super salesmen or for anyone that you need to be able to turn your back on and trust with any real amount of money, and it isn't true for people who you need to hire to give key roles to.

So, no I don't think these scenarios are as Machavellian as the author thinks, rather I think they are attempts by the employer to make a bad situation a little better.

Once upon a time there was a difference between "fired" and "laid off" If you were a prospective employer and a candidate said they were looking for a job because they were laid off, you assumed that it was not their fault and that their former employer was shrinking or out of money.

But today, so many companies have tried to avoid getting sued for wrongful termination and so on that many of them engage in periodic layoffs where they cull all the worthless employees they would have fired in times past. The managers know that these are faux layoffs and the company really isn't losing money, but it's much harder for a laid off employee to sue for discrimination or something when there's 20 other employees being "laid off" at the same time as her. So they will schedule for layoff all of the employees who regularly waste time, or don't give good output, etc. That's probably what's going on if your an employee and you have a coworker screwing off all the time and seeming to get away with it. The fact is that the company is almost better off NOT writing her up and then laying her and 20 others who are doing the same trash she is doing all at the same time and calling it a "downsize" because if there's a history of writeups on her then she has some ammunition to claim that the layoff was a fake one.

You can almost always tell a faux layoff, the company will put out an edict telling all managers to reduce headcount by 10% or something but they won't say who to layoff, they will leave that to the managers.

In a real layoff the company is fighting for it's life and they won't risk such an important decision as who to cut to their midlevel managers.

The result of this is that if a job candidate says they were laid off it's really no different than saying they were fired.

[foo8259]

Well, I thought it was a very good article which is rarer these days. Obviously a talented author, did it apply to all cases? Probably not, but it's nice to be aware of what can happen to you, why it's happening and what you can still do about it.

[nohater]

it's called down sizing to reduce expense. if you are making good money compared to your peers, you are on the radar to be dumped unless you are doing the work of two minimum. it's more cost effective to dump high salaried employees and hire new employees at a lower rate or hire contractors. fellow employees won't help you out because in their mind it's better you than me. of course, fellow employees will demonstrate empathy but deep down, it's better you than me.

[askagain]

Agreed. It is sometimes easier to eliminate a whole department or division to avoid being accused of discrimination. The problem with that is good employees are terminated along with less capable or productive employees. In my case, as a small employer, I want tp keep the truly productive and capable employees even if they are earning higher salaries. One great industrialist, Andrew Carnegie once said, "Take away my factories, my plants, take away my railroads, my ships, my transportation; take away my money, strip me of all these, but leave me my men and in two or three years, I will have them all again." Although it may not be that easy, we get the gist of his statement.