When I first read about how Microsoft had made a mistake by paying too much out on the severance checks to their recently laid off employees, I asked myself "how could they let that happen?"
But the fact that they then wanted the laid off employees to return the overpayments, I just sat there and scratched my head. Did anyone at Microsoft stop to consult with their PR department on this?
And even worse, now Microsoft is coming out and saying "never mind" and is telling the laid off employees that they can keep the change. Too little, too late.
After learning that some of the letters that they had sent to employees asking for their money back turned up on some technology blogs this past weekend, Lisa Brummel, Microsoft's senior vice president for human resources, was quoted as saying "It didn't feel quite right"
You think?
Granted, many of the 1400 laid off employees were overpaid by $4000 to $5000. That equates to $5,600,000 to $7,000,000. Not chump change.
But think about the millions of dollars of negative publicity the company received as a result of their move.
They made an error, but why should the laid off employees, who have already lost their job, pay for Microsoft's mistake?
My advice to them from the start would have been to announce the error, but that they were going to let the employees keep it. End of story.
While the public would have acknowledged that they were stupid to make such an error, at least Microsoft would have maintained the one thing in the public's eye that they lost by asking for the money back: Integrity.
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Posted by: paul jaramad | May 09, 2010 at 12:21 PM