SHRM26 Debrief · Talent Management & Acquisition · #2551
Handling Departures: The Task that Most Impacts Your Culture
with Jason Glass
"Handling departures is the single most important task that impacts your culture."
What it was about
How an organization handles the two-to-three-minute conversation of terminating or losing an employee is the single task with the biggest impact on company culture, so it deserves far more deliberate planning than it typically gets.
By the numbers
900 people
number of employees the Better.com CEO laid off over a single Zoom call, cited as a cautionary example
Key notes
- Treat every termination as a traumatic event for the employee and plan the conversation with the same care you'd give any high-stakes, emotionally charged moment, including rehearsing scenarios in advance with new managers.
- Never schedule a stand-alone calendar invite for a termination meeting; get the employee to the room via a spontaneous in-person request ('can you come to my office') rather than lying or tipping them off.
- Time terminations for a private moment during the workday, not first thing in the morning or at the very end of the day, and always hold them in a private space, never a glass-walled or open-plan area.
The contrarian takeThe speaker argues you should always give a terminated employee the actual reason for their firing. This directly contradicts standard legal and HR guidance, echoed by an audience member's employment counsel, to say only 'we are terminating you' with no explanation in at-will states, because withholding a reason increases the risk of a discrimination lawsuit rather than reducing it.
Take this back Monday
Do this for your team
Rehearse a termination script with new managers now, before they ever face one, so the real conversation isn't improvised.
Say this in your next leadership meeting
How we handle a firing in those two minutes shapes our culture more than almost anything else we do.
Watch out for
- Scheduling a surprise one-off meeting invite that tips the employee off and forces the manager into an awkward lie-or-truth choice beforehand.
- Escalating tone/volume/posture to match an agitated employee ('rising to meet' their emotion) instead of de-escalating, which increases risk of violence.
- Apologizing or saying 'I feel so bad' during the termination, which implies the decision was wrong and makes the moment about the deliverer instead of the employee.
Fun fact · Jason Glass
He's a 32-year member of the Iowa National Guard's 34th Army Band, playing saxophone and serving as Unit Drum Major.
If this landed, see these
↳ Go deeperDon’t Be Scared, Be Prepared: The Top Six Ways to Address Workplace ViolenceExpands the de-escalation instinct into a full six-step workplace violence prevention framework.⇄ The counterpointAfter The Complaint: The Decisions That Create Retaliation LiabilityComplicates 'tell them why': that explanation is exactly what juries scrutinize for retaliation.✦ The unexpected oneRe-Engage, Rebuild, Return: A Better Path to Work After Illness or InjuryThe flip side of the exit interview: how return-to-work moments shape culture just as much.