Layoffs are a fact of life these days (I should know, as I just got laid off myself), so now there are plenty of accompanying layoff-related articles coming out in the media. Lots of them are stupid, but I have found a couple of useful ones. This one is from Time magazine, and it’s a Q&A about how to cope with being laid off. Here’s the part that I found particularly helpful, in response to a question about what you should do when at the second when the news gets broken to you:
Keep your mouth shut. Keep your hand away from the pen. Sign nothing. Keep your thoughts to yourself. Ask questions. At the risk of sounding adversarial — and I don’t like to do that because I’m a huge booster of the HR profession — these people have a script. HR and the layoff managers are war-gamed against a script because they need to protect themselves legally. If you only ask questions, in a really calm way, you can get them to move off-script. And when they move off-script, they could say something that you can use in your favor.
TOTALLY true. If you end up getting escorted out of your office by security, that’s one thing, but most layoffs aren’t hostile - they’ll give you a couple of days or a week to clean your office, maybe collect your contacts from your computer, and the like. That means you also have a window where you don’t have to sign anything and can clear your head a little bit.
There’s more. Next question is “should you write down what they say to you?”
Absolutely. In fact, even if what is being said to you seems innocuous, if you take that document to an attorney who looks it over and knows what he’s looking for, there could be something buried in that document that can give you leverage for a more substantial severance package or even a wrongful-termination suit. It’s going to give you bargaining leverage, ultimately. And again, never sign the severance agreement right then and there. It’s ridiculous that it takes you much longer to buy a car than it does to lose your job. Nobody ever expects anybody on a reasonable basis to sign any document under duress. It’s completely realistic, reasonable to expect to take that document home or a copy of it so that you can look at it with your spouse, look at it with your attorney. There are all sorts of things embedded in a severance package that you can negotiate to your favor, even if it means negotiating an extra month of health insurance.
The rest of the helpful, informative article is here. I highly recommend it.
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