“IM” Firing You?

FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) — RadioShack Corp. notified about 400

workers by e-mail that they were being dismissed immediately as part of planned job cuts.

Employees at the Fort Worth headquarters got messages Tuesday morning saying: “The work force

reduction notification is currently in progress. Unfortunately your position is one that has been

eliminated.”

Company officials had told employees in a series of meetings that layoff

notices would be delivered electronically, spokeswoman Kay Jackson said. She said employees were

invited to ask questions before Tuesday’s notification on a company intranet site.

Derrick D’Souza, a management professor at the University of North Texas, said he had never

heard of such a large number of terminated employees being notified electronically. He said it

could be seen as dehumanizing to employees.

“If I put myself in their shoes, I’d say,

‘Didn’t they have a few minutes to tell me?’” D’Souza said.

Laid-off workers got

one to three weeks pay for each year of service, up to 16 weeks for hourly employees and 36 weeks

for those with base bay of at least $90,000, the company said.

Source: Associated Press

Umm…. I’m

pretty speechless on this one. Layoffs are hard enough on the employees – I can’t imagine how

anyone came around to making the decision that doing it via email would be a good idea.

I’ve roped off some time later today to dig a little and find out what type of positions

were laid off and to contact RadioShack to see if they’re providing any assistance with employees

that have been affected. Perhaps I’ll get lucky and be able to help place some of them in titles

I’ve got available in that area of the country.

This was something I did with another

large company a few years back and it was a nice little success story. The transition was smooth

for those we were able to pick up, and those that we could not appreciated our efforts to

help.

Article