I’ve noticed that some folks that I know won’t go to black Friday sales and will postpone shopping until the week before Christmas.
It’s not that they hate the maddening crowds or don’t like a bargains. It’s that in the back of their minds they’re thinking about their paychecks and whether they’ll have a job by the end of December.
Being a salaried employee can be nerve-wracking at times. Job security is a fleeting thing in the contemporary work place and the competitive nature of jobs can mean that you’re out in the middle of December looking for a job and that it’s going to be a lean Christmas.
So should employers take this into account when considering a dismissal? Do they have a moral obligation to postpone firings till after the holidays?
Of course not. The main focus of a business owner is to keep money coming into their business and to keep the paychecks flowing to those workers that are assets to the company. Keeping people on for sentiments sake is fine but it drains money from the company and keeps your team from working at peak efficiency.
You have to remember that firings are typically not done on a whim or for capricious reasons. Employees that are going to be fired usually have an established bad track record and that this is the last step of the process, not the first.
I do think that an appropriate step is to let a worker that is of dubious quality know that their job performance is not up to par before the holidays begin and that they are at risk of being dismissed in the near future. They may decide to leave on their own or at least they can modify their holiday spending plans in advance. I think that’s as much as an employer can do in this type of situation.
The only other thing I would add is that the employer has to take into the consideration the welfare of the rest of the company team that are doing their jobs well and that due to their efforts are entitled to their Happy Holidays. Keeping bad employees on for sentiments sake is just harming everyone in the long run.
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