Monitoring "Short-Timers" 2

[JillofAllTrades]

I was just given a heads-up about a small layoff that will occur in my company. The 5 or 6 affected employees will be allowed to stay for two weeks in addition to getting severance. I am asked to monitor heavily for any malicious activity. I have no idea what I am supposed to be looking for - everything shows up in logs when it is too late!

Any ideas before I succumb completely to panic mode?

Christine

 

[sleipnir214]

I'm pretty sure at least one of them is greed.


Want to ask the best questions? Read Eric S. Raymond's essay "How To Ask Questions The Smart Way". TANSTAAFL!

 

[EdwardMartinIII]

I've only seen that stunt pulled once."

At this particular company, I saw it several times. It was weird. The first thing they seemed to do was change everybody's passwords. THEN, when the person showed up, they were spun back out. So, if yuo came in the morning and your password was changed, you knew SOMEBODY was getting out-i-fied. There would usually be a brief and otherwise wholly uninformative meeting around 10am, announcing that so-and-so was no longer here.

"I was pretty insistent about getting my personal items myself."

If I hadn't been so flabbergasted, I would have. 8/

"I got them in about two minutes."

Really -- that's about all it would take, most of the time.

"Another guy once told me that he had happened to take his personal laptop to the office on the day he was terminated. He told them that if they didn't give him his laptop immediately, he was going to call the police."

Hm, well, I would not want to take my personal laptop to work anyway.

"Perhaps the moral of this story is simply: Don't take anything valuable to the office."

Well, after you work someplace for a while, you tend to collect stuff. In my case, it was mostly lunch foods, some pictures, posters, and doodads. Would have taken me mere minutes to pull it all out of there. Instead, it was shipped to me, and some of it was broken en route. I even ASKED if they could just box it and then call me and I'll pick the box up outside, but nope, had to be mailed.


Edward

"Cut a hole in the door. Hang a flap. Criminy, why didn't I think of this earlier?!" -- inventor of the cat door

 

[lionelhill]

I'm not sure that companies realise the effects of how they lay people off.

Employees are not totally stupid: if we see someone marched out the door, we know we might be the next, and we'll be handled the same way. Maltreating the leaving staff is a brilliant, highly effective way to demotivate the staying staff. It destroys all company loyalty. Ten years of away-days, group bonding and buffet lunches can be undone in a second.

I can think of at least one company that, on closing a division, offered non-specific, no strings attached retraining opportunities to all the staff who were made redundant. I'd love to work for that company!

 

[Kjonnnn]

Wow.. what a cynical company. I was laid off. Given a four week notice. No monitoring.

 

[JillofAllTrades]

The company isn't being cynical, Kjonnnn.
In fact, they resisted my efforts to monitor.

They walked one of the people to the door yesterday because he did do something bad.
Everyone else is done today.

Christine

 

[aarenot]

If they walk employees out the door when given notice by the employee they do not accept notice so it is no longer required except by contractual obligation.

If they give notice of a lay off date prior to lay offs they want people to walk out, give them cause to fire, get them to find other jobs before then so they can get out of paying them severance, unemployment, benefits, they do not have the guts to do the exit interviews. One option I missed, they actually have some ethics, or morality, caring, concern, and , or loyalty to their human assets which made them all their profits, nah.

 

[JillofAllTrades]

Yes, aarenot, it was the third option. The employees were allowed to job seek during those two weeks, and severance was granted regardless of whether they had found a new job or not. Unemployment was not contested. It is a fair company fallen on hard times.

Fortunately for me, no one tried anything malicious on their way out.

Christine

 

[ousoonerjoe]

Soooo many times I have had managers or HR run down the hall to my office and tell us to lock a person out of their PC. Then spend the next couple of days tracking down all the changes/deletes they did and fixing them. People act very weird about getting laid-off. Some take advantage of the opportunity to get a pay check while finding another job, but many become bitter and vengeful. I must say, I find the latter highly distasteful. Shows a great lack of maturity, morality, and ethics.

Glad this round went relatively easy for you. Hopefully you were able to identify other gaps in your security for future events.

"If I were to wake up with my head sewn to the carpet, I wouldn't be more surprised than I am right now.

 

[KornGeek]

Jill,

It's good to hear all went smoothly. Perhaps this is a case of employees treating their (former) employer fairly because the employer was making an effort to treat them fairly. I would like to believe that if the company has historically treated employees with honesty and respect, the vast majority of employees will return the favor.

 

[aarenot]

I am a big enough man(250 lbs) to admit when I am wrong, but my statement was a statement of the rule, and the reality was the exception that proves the rule. I am glad you have had the experience to work for such an exception, and recomend you stay there if at all possible. I have never worked for a company that did not in some way intimidate their employees into doing things which cheated the employee in a way the company would not be cheated in itself.

 

[MDXer]

It is always nice to hear when a company treats employees in a respectful manner even when ending their employment.

I have worked for numerous companies and typically put in above and beyond 40-60, typically 80+hours, a week to guarantee project success. At my last company the became the expectation rather than the exception. Project deadlines became shorter and shorter while workloads increased. After being fired I was upset for all of about 2 hours, they had given me a severance package and was interviewing 2 days later. I got paid to fish for 6 weeks in which time they became 4 months behind schedule.

Paul
---------------------------------------
Shoot Me! Shoot Me NOW!!!
- Daffy Duck

 

[flapeyre]

Project deadlines became shorter and shorter while workloads increased. After being fired I was upset for all of about 2 hours, they had given me a severance package and was interviewing 2 days later. I got paid to fish for 6 weeks in which time they became 4 months behind schedule.

Too bad that managers don't always realize that hard and fast deadlines can be counterproductive (esp. when combined with downsizing to "save costs". You cannot implement a complex project on the cheap. Choose one - takes longer but done right, or done quickly and shoddily, and have the application come out as buggy as an ant farm (in which case the "savings", and more, are generally blown away by re-doing the project the correct way).

Nullum gratuitum prandium.
--Sleipinir214

 

[MDXer]

Sad thing is that at this point the company had the means and was trying to grow its staff but had the wrong people interviewing. They hired a Web Developer and thought he would be productive in Data Warehousing in a month or so. I had hired 10 people while there all but 1 had proven to be a great find. The team they had hiring cared more about degrees and certifications than actual ability to do the work.

Paul
---------------------------------------
Shoot Me! Shoot Me NOW!!!
- Daffy Duck

 

[Bandenjamin]

Too bad that managers don't always realize that hard and fast deadlines can be counterproductive (esp. when combined with downsizing to "save costs". You cannot implement a complex project on the cheap. Choose one - takes longer but done right, or done quickly and shoddily, and have the application come out as buggy as an ant farm (in which case the "savings", and more, are generally blown away by re-doing the project the correct way).

Great sign I saw in a car repair shop.

Good, Fast, Cheap, Pick 2

--Dan
Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.
Mark Twain

 

[chris13]

Hi,

I found a great article about the culture of firing staff in a different context.
The title is about IT and developers, but I think the idea is fare more general, touching any employer:

http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Up-or-Out-Solving-the-IT-Turnover-Crisis.aspx

 

[MDXer]

Nice read sounds like my last company.

Paul
---------------------------------------
Shoot Me! Shoot Me NOW!!!
- Daffy Duck

 

[Trevoke]

Great link, Chris. Thanks .. Something I definitely needed to read

Tao Te Ching Discussions : Chapter 9 (includes links to previous chapters)
What is the nature of conflict?

 

[gbaughma]

If the employee believes that he or she has been wronged, then he may do something. Can you blame him?

If the employee feels that (s)he has been wronged, there are avenues to follow for that. Yes, I would blame him/her. And, frankly, give them a good brow-beating about maintaining a set of professional ethics expected from people in the I.T. field. Frankly, I'd probably tell him/her that they are in the wrong field if they are going to "undo" the work that they were paid to do.

I've only seen that stunt pulled once. I was pretty insistent about getting my personal items myself. I got them in about two minutes. It was fine if they wanted to stand over while I did it.

That wouldn't have worked at my old job. You could have been as instant as you wanted, even while you were in handcuffs being ejected from the property.

As an IT supervisor for a rather large company with a lot of HIPAA regulated information, there wouldn't have been any argument about it. I was usually informed by the head of security as he was heading to someone's office (or as they were being called to their supervisor) to immediately suspend their accounts.



Just my 2¢

"What the captain doesn't realize is that we've secretly replaced his Dilithium Crystals with new Folger's Crystals."

--Greg

http://parallel.tzo.com