What to Say to Your Team After Firing Someone

Employee terminations are tough. The process is awkward, from giving the bad news to the fired employee to sharing that news with the team. Managing the expectations of and alleviating the concerns of your remaining workers is important to protecting team morale.

So what’s a small business owner to do? Here’s our best advice to cut down on gossip, shore up morale, and reinvigorate your employees when you provide notification that someone has been let go.

Don’t be silent, but keep the conversation brief

After a termination meeting, remaining quiet after firing an employee may be tempting. You may feel like anything you say will do more harm than good. But your silence can create fertile ground for gossip to flourish.

However uncomfortable these difficult conversations may be, you’re better off sharing the news that someone is no longer with the company rather than letting people speculate. Receiving the information from you will also reassure them that a mass layoff isn’t occurring. So schedule a quick meeting with a small core group of the terminated employee’s direct coworkers. (If anyone is remote, make sure they’re included by also creating and sharing a video conference.)

You don’t want to publicize that the employee was fired, and you should respect their privacy, but you should share the fact that the individual isn’t a colleague anymore with the rest of your team who should be made aware of it on a need-to-know basis. Here are a few pointers for handling it:

• Be careful with your words. When you explain to your team why the former employee was terminated, be deliberate about your word choice. Less is more, so stick to simple language, such as “John no longer works here” or “It’s Maggie’s last day.” You can say that you wish the person well on their future endeavors, but don’t praise their past performance. That would sound disingenuous, and you don’t want to risk losing the trust of your team.
  
  Don’t get into any details about firing due to disciplinary actions, and move the conversation forward with what’s to come. Stay focused on team goals and the transition plan, covering whether or not the role will be backfilled and how responsibilities for the position will be handled during the interim.
  
• Be choosy when you dole out the details. Be prudent about how much information employees receive. A part-time delivery driver should be told fewer details than your right-hand person. Should a fired employee choose to file a claim for being dismissed from work, you don’t want to say anything after letting the individual go that could potentially be used in a case. According to USAGov, a former employee may have grounds to take action against a company if their termination policies weren’t followed. They can also sue for wrongful termination for these legal reasons:
  • Discrimination
  • Violating a federal or state labor law
  • Dismissing an employee for reporting and refusing to participate in harassment or for reporting and refusing to conduct an illegal act or safety violation

• Prevent panic. Assuming the person was fired for cause and not for financial reasons, such as a layoff, reassure employees that their jobs are secure (if that is true). If the employee was laid off, be clear about how extensive the downsizing will be and provide your reasoning with empathy.
  
• Avoid negative talk. Nothing is more likely to get employees talking around the coffee maker than terminations for causes like discrimination, violence, harassment, or theft. Make sure to inform your team of their responsibilities to prevent defamation of the terminated employee.
  
• Keep an open door. Make sure your team members know they can come to you with questions or concerns. You might not be able to answer every question, but making yourself available and remaining compassionate about and receptive to employee concerns will help ease their understandable fears. If your team works remotely, let them know the digital door is always open for any conversations via email, Slack, or a video meeting.
  
• Read the room. Consider how the firing affects morale and productivity. If the terminated employee’s work will be reallocated to one or more people, it’s important to spend some time with each team member to ensure that they understand the need to shoulder part of the burden and that you are receptive to working with them to minimize the stress. Nothing will make your team members feel overwhelmed or resentful more than taking their resilience for granted.

Communicate what will change

Aside from understanding what caused their coworker’s firing, your employees will ultimately want to know how the loss affects their workflow. Plan in advance to answer these four questions regarding the transition plan after the coworker’s departure:

• How will the departing employee’s tasks be distributed?
• Who will be the point person for managing that person’s workload?
• Will they be replaced? If so, how soon?
• In the meantime, what changes about the day-to-day work?

Give a rules and resource refresher

Have an employee handbook? Now’s a good time to break it out and review company policy with the remaining employees. (If you don’t already have one, this might be a good opportunity to create a handbook for your team). And if you had to let an employee go for a reason that’s not clearly laid out in the handbook, now is a good time to refresh it. Under the guidance of your Human Resources team, you can also review handbook sections that cover relevant topics, such as the following:

• When an employee is let go regarding poor performance or misalignment with company goals, be sure to cover with your team that terminations are difficult for everyone, and that a process is followed to provide support and help correct course with warnings, specific feedback, and coaching. While discretion is important and you shouldn’t share details about the fired employee’s performance, you may want to provide a general overview of performance reviews and the steps associated with progressive discipline to address performance issues, so people understand that firing people isn’t done suddenly.
• If you had to terminate your employee for something serious like harassment or discrimination, consider training (or even an informal conversation) with your team to review the ground rules. Consult your HR professionals about how to do this effectively.
• You may also want to direct your current employees to information about employment laws (these should be posted in the workplace). This should explain rules about your state’s policies, like at-will employment rules.
• You may want to inform employees about their rights post-firing. For example, whether people get severance pay or anything else in a severance package, rights to COBRA, payment of unused vacation time, and other policies. Your employee handbook should have a section about the termination process to refer to.

After firing a member of a small team, it can be challenging to get back into the swing of things. From dividing up the workload to figuring out what went wrong, there are a lot of items you and your employees need to face when someone leaves. Be sure to let team members know that HR is available for further questions or to talk with someone face-to-face about their feelings or their reaction to the news. If you encourage communication, you can help ensure a smooth transition, prevent future challenges, and help your team become more resilient than ever.