{{image}}What’s the right way to fire a trainee?? Hmmm let’s see … by post it, e-mail or voice mail — what’s going on these days- do partners and managers lack the courage to fire someone face-to-face??
According to thelondonpaper, face-to-face is not the practice of Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer which left phone messages for some trainee solicitors telling them that they had missed out on permanent jobs, after a two year traineeship. Human resources workers phoned trainees to tell them whether or not they were being retained. When they did not get through to some of those being released, they left a voice mail telling them: “It’s not good news”.
A Freshfields spokesman acknowledged that voice mails were left in “three or four cases” and that the method of communication was “not ideal”. NOT IDEAL–Spineless is the word that comes to my mind. The spokesman said that “…we wanted to get the information out as soon as possible. We did not want to take the chance of them hearing first from someone else.”
Come on — what ever happened to the dreaded, “Please, step into my office”? What’s going on over there—is no one keeping an eye on the ball—ultimately the partners are the ones who should be overseeing what’s going on and they should have the guts to pull the trigger.
I would say that after two years of working in a firm — trainee or not — that I would rather “hear it from someone else” instead of a voice mail message. Not to mention that a little face-to face time wouldn’t hurt anyone.
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