The MANAGING OUT PROCESS

The What and Why of “Managing Out” In certain cases, the review process we discussed in my last article was weaponized to set up people to be “managed out.” Once the company targeted you, regardless of the reason, your chances of staying were low. In its simplest form, “managing out” was the process used by managers and HR, to get someone to leave the company. If all else failed, the company would make these targeted employees leave but HR preferred people leave of their own volition or by mutual agreement. The why is much harder to explain. The reason did not tie into the targeted employees due to performance. I know of cases where the employee met their metrics or in corporate speak “had a green scorecard.” No, it was something else. It was a vague determination that built throughout the managers and executives that a person was not the “right type.” I do not know if it was their looks, their image, their voice, or their age. Often people targeted had been with the company a long time as respected, successful, teammates and most were heading towards or north of fifty before it was determined that they were not the “right type.” Suffice to say there are multiple “whys.” The question is, are any of the “whys” a good enough reason for the mental abuse I observed deployed in the managing out process? Three Examples In the first case I witnessed the colleague was a woman on my team that I will call Anne (not her real name). Anne had always been a high performer. The year she went out on parental leave, unexpectedly, she received zero rewards. I would like to tell you that being out on leave did not affect your bonus status, but it did. I know of another woman who when she took leave to battle breast cancer who also received zero rewards. They reorganized our team the following year, and it appeared our new manager, I will call Amy (not her real name) thought well of Anne. Coming out of the “people’s discussion” (see the Stack Ranking article) our manager said nobody on our team deserved zero rewards. However, the VP over our team disliked Anne. It seemed arbitrary as if Anne did not fit the “image” this VP wanted for his team. Our manager fought hard for Anne and held her ground. The result was the VP tried to have our manager, Amy, fired. Amy was a respected manager, and another VP was happy to offer Amy a manager role on his team. Amy’s old team was dismantled with four or five of us assigned to a new manager I will call Bob (not his real name). Bob came to town and met each of us individually. It was at this meeting that Bob told Anne that he did not think her position with the company was “recoverable.” Anne asked Bob what she could do, and he asked Anne if she would take on a series of projects, on top of her day job. The workload was punishing. After each project, Bob would find fault and then tell Anne that he did not know if this project was enough to save her while giving her more projects as he held out the carrot of working yourself into redemption. Slowly the stress of the workload and the uncertainty of her job status began to take mental and emotional toll. I suggested she ask him bluntly if there was any way she could recover. He refused to answer the question directly and continued to pile on the work and then find fault while holding out a sliver of hope. The entire process was calculating. They were trying to break her, and they finally did. This smart, confident, woman was torn down into a stressed out, mental mess filled with self-doubt. Six months after her first conversation with Bob, Anne went to HR and capitulated. They offered her a “package” of severance and cobra to leave on her own if she signed an agreement never to sue or disparage. <a href="https://medium.com/@janetkahr/the-managing-out-process-d60f94704564">Website</a>