Offer Job to Employee?
Janet
124 Posts
I'm hoping all you wise forumites can help me out with a situation:
Our company recently terminated a salesperson, age 61, whose sales area wasn't productive enough to warrant keeping him in that area. Now the Marketing department wants to advertise for a Sales Trainee, with the intent of grooming this person for outside sales, probably in another area of the country.
Did we just shoot ourselves in the foot here? Should we have offered the sales position (albeit in another part of the country) to the 61-year old salesman before we teminated?
(If there were underlying reasons that management chose to terminate the 61-year old, they were sage enough to keep it to themselves.)
Our company recently terminated a salesperson, age 61, whose sales area wasn't productive enough to warrant keeping him in that area. Now the Marketing department wants to advertise for a Sales Trainee, with the intent of grooming this person for outside sales, probably in another area of the country.
Did we just shoot ourselves in the foot here? Should we have offered the sales position (albeit in another part of the country) to the 61-year old salesman before we teminated?
(If there were underlying reasons that management chose to terminate the 61-year old, they were sage enough to keep it to themselves.)
Comments
>(If there were underlying reasons that management chose to terminate
>the 61-year old, they were sage enough to keep it to themselves.)
I think you should change your above quote to "...they were unwise enough to keep it to themselves." I see nothing sage in a decision to terminate a person in a protected class to his surprise. Such a termination should never be a surprise. Hopefully your company has plenty of documentation that will show his failure to produce, his comparison with other sales personnel, efforts to turn him around and plenty of disciplinary or counseling notes. I'm not clear on whether you are saying "The territory offered no prospect for performance" or "The sales guy was not productive". Monday morning quarterbacking would say, yes, it would have been wise to offer him a transfer if simple position elimination were the issue. But, if you indicate he was a poor performer, never would you offer such a person a transfer, just so you could later show that he turned it down. Firing a protected class person and hiring a person not of a protected class can always be problematic for you. It may have made perfect sense to do it and you may prevail if it goes to a charge or hearing; but, you'll work your buns off getting to that point. If you have solid documentation to support the firing and can count on good supervisory testimony about comparitive performance, don't sweat it. The EEOC is pretty clever at spotting things like the company firing a person in a protected class, eliminating his territorial position, stating that they've temporarily restructured the sales territories, waiting 3-6 months, then putting the organization back in place and hiring a person not in a protected class. It takes much less training than rocket science to spot that. Good luck.
To respond to your post, perhaps you can tell from the tone of my post that unfortunately, our 2-person HR department is viewed as a necessary evil in this company. That being said, my co-worker and I are never certain what underlying issues prompt decisions. Our company has no official HR Director, so HR's function here is basically administrative.
Now, off the soapbox--I do believe it's true that this salesman's territory was simply unproductive. Our company is experiencing some rough times. Did the salesman's age play into the decision? I have no way of knowing for sure, only what I was told--that the sales just aren't there. I don't believe he'll come back to haunt us, but for future reference am interested to know if our company was obligated to offer him the other opening. I really don't think so, but wanted other views.
Janet
>
>Our company recently terminated a salesperson, age 61, whose sales
>area wasn't productive enough to warrant keeping him in that area.
Dandy Don & gillian are right on. It is obvious to me that your marketing department is correct in their assessment of the territory. They felt the company was waisting the talents and experiences of the 61 year old. They would have offerred him another territory; however, they already knew he was opposed to relocating to a more challenging territory. The gentleman and respectful thing to do and the smart thing to have done was to offer and let the ee say "thanks, but nothanks" in a written format.
We HRs who get involved with other department decisions early on can help keep the company out of "Hot Water". Opening the old territory as a specific training territory is not a problem as long as you get the chance to document the job description, the qualifications specifics, and the sales goal & objectives to be real for a trainee. Likewise, the coordination and training of this trainee should be done by a professional HR trainer and not the Same person who supervised the 61 year old. This old territory is not going to be supporting the regional or marketing department goals in sales. Otherwise, you may have "stepped on it" or "shot your self in the foot".
You can always write the 61 year old and offer him another territory and get his response of a "turndown". That should help you cover the questionable trail or concerns for the companies' reorganizational actions. I would do this before we announce a reopening of the old territory.