Is this a threat

ozydave_1999

Hi
Just would like to have an objective opinion on the text below. I know what i think but a second opinion would be great.

An initial redundacy meeting took place Friday 5th June.
This was the first staff heard about it.
The chair of the meeting explained that 8 staff were to go out of the 30 present.

The chair of the meeting delivered this sentance (this is word for word) towards the end of the meeting after a couple of questions were asked of the chair.

"Of course there will be some angst, there will be some worry, there will be some concern but i'll come back to the way i'll finish it. Try and be as professional as possible, thoses people that can be calm and collected clealry and deal with this in a proffessional way, we will clealy see that, and thats important, because if decisions have to be made, in the future, *there was a pause* you know think about it."

Many Thanks

xHannahx

Sounds like they will be monitoring staff and losing the weakest, keeping the stronger employees. They will probably have a scoring system of some kind.

maninthestreet

Do you want to stay, or would you leave quietly if the package was good enough? Was any date given for when the those actually chosen for redundancy would be informed of this decision?

asajj

It is not a threat in my opinion. Yes hard to like the comment but people say worse things.

DKLS

Thats not much of a threat I have heard and seen much worse from senior management.

One company I worked for would have a "re-organisation" every 12-18 months, and one Director would take pleasure in announcing he would get shot of the dead wood.

martinsurrey

so he said, "We would prefer to keep people who handle change better and more professionally."

sounds like a normal thing to me.

Its a bit like a gross misconduct clause, that's a threat to get rid of you, but only if you mess up!

teffers

The most important thing in situations like this (from the company's point of view) is not to panic the villagers ... and that comment is purely designed to make everything think that, as long as they don't cause problems, they are in with a chance of keeping their job.

The reality is likely to be that they have already chosen who's going...

moneyistooshorttomention

teffers wrote: »

The most important thing in situations like this (from the company's point of view) is not to panic the villagers ... and that comment is purely designed to make everything think that, as long as they don't cause problems, they are in with a chance of keeping their job.

The reality is likely to be that they have already chosen who's going...

I would see it as meant to be threatening. But my experience of employers from my latter years at work was they were always putting up Paper Tigers and that was part of how they operated (public sector if you are wondering). I don't know if the private sector operate the same way.

It was a very very common thing for my (former) public sector employer to try and scare us all into submission and it did "do my head in" trying to work out whether they meant it and could really do what they were threatening to do each time.

By and large it was "hot air" designed to frighten the vulnerable into leaving "of their own free will" and make everyone else "bow down and shut up".

....and...yes....they had basically already decided who was for the chop each time....but were hoping they would get lucky and frighten some more into taking themselves off as well (ie find themselves another job, rather than hanging around waiting for a redundancy payout).

It was surprising just how many people did take fright when they did this.

jobbingmusician

It might well be a threat, but so what? I can't see that it is offensive.

I would, in particular, take it as a warning NOT TO PUT ANYTHING ON FACEBOOK/SOCIAL MEDIA discussing the issues. (I think on here is fine so long as you take care to anonymise details - nothing identifies the employer and you are anonymous.)