Creative Solutions

Terminating or laying people off can cause a lot of problems if a manager doesn’t know how to properly handle it. When there is such a big problem like this one sometimes you need multiple people coming up with solutions together. In our team we were able to come up with four possible solutions to this issue but we decided that the best two solutions was to provide management with good training and mock terminations.

In week 2 we had come up with those solutions during this week we went into further details about why each of the solutions we came up with were good for the problem at hand. The first solution, training would be very helpful to managers because it would give them an idea of how they should act, react, or the tone to use when letting someone go. Proper training allows them to consider the employees feelings and know what to expect before they go into the meeting. I think that with good training management has a better chance of being prepared at how they should treat their employees when giving them such bad news. I think in the end it will help make them better managers because they are more knowledgeable about how to handle themselves in those situations.

The second solution that we discussed was mock terminations. The idea for that was that managers would be taken to a meeting where they will be put through a fake termination meeting without knowing that it is fake. Personally I believe this is an extremely great idea because that is the only real way to give managers an idea of what it feels like to be fired without actually being fired. It will give them the experience without ever having to put on their job history that they were let go. It can also give them an idea of what to say to the employee. Both solutions were great ideas and we all determined that they would be the most helpful to a manager who has not had to fire someone before.

In our discussion it was determined that we used facts to come up with the conclusion. We each started explaining why we agreed with the solutions and what the benefits of each solution was. I think we were also able to determine what solutions to use by thinking about what how to get the manager to know what employees feel when they are put in that situation. If we had only considered how the manager feels when letting go of someone then we wouldn’t have been able to come up with any ideas that would really fix the issue.