Toronto Employment and Labour Blog: Sure Signs You Are About To Be Fired

SURE SIGNS YOU ARE ABOUT TO BE FIRED AND WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT - 

Many executive-level employees are caught by surprise when it happens to them. “I didn’t see it coming” is a common reaction. In retrospect, you may realize that there were certain telltale signs that you either were unaware of at the time, or you were aware of but wished to ignore. We can rationalize most things. “I’m just getting paranoid.” “My boss meant nothing by that remark.” You are probably wrong. The boss did mean something – you were just not alert enough to grasp that meaning or were wilfully blind to its implications.

If your perceptions had been more acute and accurate, and if you had acted on your early observations, would you have adjusted your behaviour, attitude or response so that your job remained secure? Employees are not necessarily equipped with extrasensory antennae that pick up changes in the political atmosphere at work. High achievers and good workers are not naturally politically wise. Nor has their training included a course on “political strategies to ensure survival at the office.” Being a good worker is often not good enough when your boss is replaced, your mentor moves on, or the company reorganizes. When those changes occur, you can be perceived by your superiors as being too inflexible, too independent or too costly. This is quite apart from discrimination regarding age, gender, race, religious beliefs, sexual orientation or disability – all of which have legal consequences. You may have simply fallen out of political favour and you are either totally unaware of it, or even if you recognize you are facing political problems, you just don’t know what to do about it…until it is too late.

Political problems at work come in a wide variety of deadly variations. Keeping you job may depend on early detection of your particular problem and developing a strategic reaction or counteroffensive. Your most serious issue is that it is happening to you – you are both the subject and object of the problem. Under these circumstances, it is difficult to develop a plan to deal with the political fallout. You are neither objective nor dispassionate. You are more poorly equipped than most people to observe and understand the process. To do so, you must have great powers of detachment.

You are naturally angry and frightened – change is disconcerting and scary. You must initiate appropriate changes in your behaviour before inevitable decisions are made for you. But how do you back away from your own situation to assess how best to react to make your future more secure? It’s easy to advise someone else in these circumstances. But it’s impossible to advise oneself carefully and cautiously, especially when you realize that it is you who is being targeted for removal, replacement or early retirement.

Secure, productive employees do not quickly adjust to unanticipated changed circumstances. Denial is a common response. “I am misreading the signals. There are no signals. I’ve become oversensitive. My work is good” are all non-responsive, but normal reactions in these circumstances. Since most people just don’t know what to do about it, they deny that any serious problem exists. Before you attempt to solve such workplace problems, put yourself in a position to accurately identify the issues. If not, you could find that you are building a wonderful solution to someone else’s problem.

There are signposts to help you identify the problem that you likely are facing or are about to face. Over the next number of weeks, I will provide examples of true life stories that will open the door so that you can explore appropriate options and available solutions. The first step is recognizing the signs.

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