Latest / Prayer Before Work / Manage Her Out So the Company Doesn’t Pay $200,000 in Severance - Prayer Before Work
Transcript
- C0701: You've just been handed a new assignment. Get your best employee to quit. Well, my name is Sean, and welcome back to Prayer Before Work. This one came to me as a question and it's a hard one. So picture a manager with an employee we'll call Susan. Twenty years at the company, seven of them reporting to this manager, strong reviews every year, two well-earned promotions. Then new leadership comes in. And suddenly it's layoffs, offshoring, and cost cutting everywhere. Where this company operates, anyone let go without cause gets one month of severance pay for every year they've worked. So for Susan, that's more than two hundred thousand dollars. So word comes down, manage her out, make her want to leave on her own. So the company doesn't have to pay. And this manager's own bonus and future promotions are likely tied to getting it done. Meanwhile, Susan keeps doing great work, and every other manager she works with keeps saying so. Now there's no clean answer here, and this can be very d a d very difficult position to be put into, but there's a verse in the Bible that puts its finger, I think, right on the pressure point. Proverbs 327. And it says, Do not withhold good from those whom it is due when it is in your power to do it. So two phrases in that verse matter. The first one is to whom it is due. Susan's severance isn't just a gift, it's an established company policy. It it's what she's owed after twenty years of service and being a good performer. And the second one is when it is in your power. Now that's the hard one. Because in this story, something really is in the manager's power. Now they can't stop the restructuring and they may not be able to save her job, but they get to decide whether they'll be the one who makes her life miserable until she walks out the door. So what could that look like? it might mean refusing to write anything about her performance that isn't true. Your reviews have been honest for seven years, keep them honest. It might mean asking leadership in writing to spell out exactly what they want. Are you asking me to document performance problems that I haven't seen? Instructions like this tend to get a lot vaguer when someone asks for specifics. It might mean talking with HR or even an employment lawyer lawyer about where this crosses a legal line, because In a lot of places it does. And yeah, that might cost you. Might cost you your bonus, your next promotion, maybe more. But these are things that sometimes come with being a leader. But you you'd keep something they can't put on a spreadsheet. You'd still be able to look Susan in the eye and look at yourself in the mirror. And if you're in some version of this today You're carrying something heavy. Don't carry it alone. Talk to someone you trust before you decide anything. So let's pray. God, sometimes people above us ask us to do things we know are not right. And and it can scare us because our families depend on these jobs too. But Lord, give us courage to treat people the way they deserve to be treated. Protect the people who have less power than we do. And show us what's actually in our hands and help us to use it well. And whatever it costs us, help us trust that you see it. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. I'm gonna make today count.