The Vancouver sun posted a shocking article converning a Kelowna esthetician Crystal Bell was fired via
Facebook and by doing this she spawned a debate over "cyber sacking" and what employers
owe their employees in times when electronic communication has become
the norm.
Read on:
"I think it's going to be the way of the future, but
for me it's not the human way to go," said Bell, a single mother who
found out she was canned when she checked her Facebook e-mail one
morning in November as she was getting ready for work.
"I think using any kind of texting or e-mailing to let people go is the coward's way out."
The
former spa worker, who concedes that she was also hired via Facebook,
had only been on the job two weeks when she was let go with an
electronic pink slip after failing to show up at a meeting on her day
off.
"I still got dressed and went into work that day because I
thought she was kidding," said Bell, who received word of her firing
via her private Facebook inbox, so it was not available online for all
her friends to see.
The termination sparked a bit of a stir
online, with employment lawyers and a human resources experts blogging
about whether cyber sackings are merely the modern equivalent of a
letter of termination. Are they just tacky, or do they also raise
questions about the legal ins and outs of letting employees go?
In
the U.S., Radio Shack sparked an uproar online and in newspaper
editorials when the electronics company notified 400 employees by
e-mail two years ago that they were being dismissed.
"There are
both legalistic and humanistic reasons to not be resorting to e-mail or
other electronic forms of communication to terminate employment," said
Robert Smithson, a Vancouver labour lawyer.
"A prudent employer would say this might not be the most friendly, sympathetic manner so we're going to avoid that."
The
Supreme Court of Canada, in a 1997 ruling known as the Wallace
decision, set out how firing, if done in a cavalier way, can result in
"bad faith" damages awards, in addition to normal severance pay. But
the ruling does not contemplate the prospect of firing by electronic
means.
Bell acknowledges that she was unreachable on the night of
the missed staff meeting because she was at the hospital with her sick
mother. She had no minutes left on her cellphone and her voice mailbox
on her home phone was full.
Bell said she contacted a lawyer
about the prospect of damages, but he told her she was out of luck
because she had worked at the spa for only two weeks.
Her former
boss, Susanne Woerhie, defended the Facebook firing by saying that she
had tried to call Bell after she skipped the staff meeting but couldn't
reach her.
"I just wanted to have it dealt with that evening,"
Woerhie told the Kelowna Daily Courier. "I didn't want to deal with it
at the shop when other people were around."
There are not believed to be any Canadian figures on how often employers use e-mail to terminate employment.
But
the San Francisco-based International Association of Business
Communicators, which informally surveyed 500 members after the Radio
Shack fallout, reported that 29 per cent said they delivered bad news
via e-mail, including layoff notices, according to an article in the
Christian Science Monitor.
Ruth Haag,
author of the book Hiring and Firing, said she fears for the future if
cyber sacking becomes commonplace and bosses start routinely replacing
face-to-face terminations.
"It's very hard to fire people so when
supervisors have to fire someone they find the quickest and easiest way
to do it," Haag said in an interview from Sandusky, Ohio.
"Doing
an e-mail is quickest and easiest but people forget it is the most
public way to communicate because it can be around the world in minutes
and you're looking like a jerk for firing someone that way," she said.
"It's more public that standing on a street corner and announcing it."
Smithson
notes that a potential complication if a fired employee seeks damages
is that e-mail is not considered to be private or secure. Messages are
sent via company servers that can be retrieved by others. Also,
messages are stored on systems that can be saved for years.
"Keep
in mind the [e-mail] might contain allegations of misconduct which may
later be proven to be untrue, so their disclosure could give rise to
concerns on the defamation front," Smithson said.
Cissy Pau, a
principal consultant with Vancouver-based Clear HR Consulting, said she
found it unsettling that Bell was also hired via Facebook. But she
added that it could be a "generational thing" that is more acceptable
among younger employers and employees.
Referred by Matt Lalande
If you are an employer that need terminaton advice or an employee that has been wrongly terminated, please do not hesitate to call Matt Lalande or Christopher J. Haber at 905-639-8894.