One of the big positions of this article is that despite employers' insistence that "firing isn't personal", employees will take firing personally and it negatively impacts them and can negatively impact the company's culture. Saying "no it doesn't, don't take it personally" isn't really a counterargument.
It doesn't affect the company's culture if the employee chooses to take the firing personally. In the end if there is a valid reason for firing someone then from a company's perspective it doesn't matter to the company how it affects the employee fired.
Additionally this article just talks from the author's viewpoint so we really don't know exactly why he was fired. If you read the post it would seem like the CEO told him he can take a sabbatical and his manager told him don't come back. There is a huge disconnect somewhere that we are not being told about. If the author's behavior prior to leaving for sabbatical was toxic to the team the company shouldn't be responsible for taking care of his feelings and emotional state on being fired.
I'm not saying being fired doesn't suck as an employee but expecting the company to take care of you as you are being fired or afterwards is kind of naive and a little self-centric in my opinion.
> It doesn't affect the company's culture if the employee chooses to take the firing personally
When you fire a highly productive team member it will almost certainly mess with the companies culture. If that team member was "fired incorrectly" and talks to the rest of the team about it productivity and culture will take a beating.
As soon as I see a good team mate fired I start looking for a new job.
Without finding out "why" he/she was fired? A highly productive team member can also be a toxic team member if they make members of the team uncomfortable or is a bully or condescending or.... or....
However your point is well taken in the sense that if the employee does take it personally and then spins a tale, in front of the team, that makes them look innocent and paint the company as vindictive or unreasonable, then yes it would affect team morale but that is easily remedied by managers being candid. We are actually going through a similar situation right now where I work so this topic is very timely.
If management give a good reason and they have put in place measures to reduce fallout then I'll consider staying.
One question I always ask is what work are we dropping out of scope?
I'm currently working in a team of 5. We have two high performers and three average performers (I'm one of the average performers). The top performers do ~60% of the work.
If management doesn't plan on descoping 30%+ of the work for the next 3-6 months then it means an extra 10+ hours of work each week for me.
Realistically it's an extra 120-240 hours all up. I freelance at ~$100/hr so that's a cost of $12-24k.
So yeah if they have punched or sexually assaulted a colleague etc then I'll just put up with the cost.
If they make someone feel uncomfortable or are a bit condescending and you fire fast then I'm going to be looking for a new job.
