Manage someone out of the company?? Is this Wrong/Legal?

[SpanishWaiter01]

Hello All:
Do you think it is acceptable to "manage someone out of a company" (terminate/sack) for an issue that happend 3 yrs ago which, they were partly responsible for. The management are vengeful. Two months ago, this person shut off a server by accident [shut down by typo] and did not realise they had done it. Server was down for 4/6 hrs and no one noticed (team of 30 guys).
This person cannot log in and work (account disabled) - effectively suspended.

Useful and constructive comments welcome.

Thanks,
SpanishWaiter

 

[lionelhill]

Acceptable means different things in ethics and in law. For the legal side, consult a lawyer who knows your local law. Care needed! Compensation claims can be a nasty area to get into. Think of both direct costs (the claim) and indirect (bad publicity).

Ethics is broader. Things that happened three years ago should have been resolved then. Unless the decision was taken back then that the miscreant would be under a suspended sentence/on probation for X years, then it's not right to reconsider their original fault now. Particularly if the two faults are unrelated. Of course, if the employee is genuinely a serious hazard to the company, and there's no way they can be brought up to scratch/deployed to a more suitable role, there's a case with good ethics for trying to sack them. There are two important questions to ask:
(1) Why am I trying to get rid of this person? Are my reasons honest?
(2) What are the consequences for everyone else/the company as a whole?

 

[kmcferrin]

Agreed, if you want to know whether something is legal, ask a lawyer.

If you want to know whether something is wrong or ethical, you're just asking for random opinions.

Generally speaking, people get "managed" out of a company all of the time. Usually it's when there's a new manager or director who doesn't connect with their new reports. Typically there will be a number of issues that come up again and again until the senior person has enough documentation to justify letting them go, or until the subordinate decides to leave on their own. It may not be the most ethical thing to do, but it happens all the time in business (at least in the US).

Your question is pretty sketchy though. You're asking if it's OK to "manager someone out of a company," (it happens), "terminiate/sack them" (yes, it's perfectly OK to terminate someone's employment for cause), and then go on at the end to describe the person as having been "suspended" via having their account locked out. Which is it?

Typically when you lock someone out it's because you're about to terminate their employment. Usually it's for cause, and the person in question will be finding out about it pretty quickly. I think that in most cases the law would look dimly on terminating someone "for cause" three years after the incident that provides them with cause, unless there was an investigation after the incident that took three years to complete. That doesn't seem to be the case here.

Do you know for the fact that "the person's" account has been intentionally locked, or is it just a misunderstanding due to paranoia and too many failed login attempts? I feel like there is more to this story than we are seeing.

________________________________________
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MCTS:Windows 7
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MCSE:Security 2003
MCITP:Enterprise Administrator

 

[SpanishWaiter01]

thanks for the advice, chaps
thread closed