Company Accidentally Fires Entire Staff Via Email 333
redletterdave writes with an amusing tale of missent email. From the article: "On Friday, more than 1,300 employees of London-based Aviva Investors walked into their offices, strolled over to their desks, booted up their computers and checked their emails, only to learn the shocking news: They would be leaving the company. The email ordered them to hand over company property and security passes before leaving the building, and left the staff with one final line: 'I would like to take this opportunity to thank you and wish you all the best for the future. 'This email was sent to Aviva's worldwide staff of 1,300 people, with bases in the U.S., UK, France, Spain, Sweden, Canada, Italy, Ireland, Germany, Norway, Poland, Switzerland, Belgium, Austria, Finland and the Netherlands. And it was all one giant mistake: The email was intended for only one individual."
Re:moral of the story (Score:5, Informative)
Nobody was fired. RTFA. It was nothing more than a final note to a person who was leaving the company.
Re:Wrong (Score:5, Informative)
If you read the article, you will see that nobody was fired. Someone was leaving the company, and they got a note reminding of them of contractual obligations, procedures to be followed, and a thanks for years of service. That person would have found nothing odd at all about receiving the note. It was the people who weren't expecting the note who assumed they were fired.
Re:Wrong (Score:5, Informative)
Slow down there, champ. Despite TFA being headlined "[FULL TEXT]", the full contents of the email doesn't appear in the article.
The link to Reuters [reuters.com] in the article doesn't either, but contains the following statement from Aviva's spokesman: "An email which was intended for a member of staff who was leaving today was accidentally sent to all Aviva Investors staff worldwide."
In other words, the intended recipient was well aware he/she was leaving, not even necessarily fired, and a form letter is used to lay out information outgoing staff need to be aware of. Worth a giggle at how for a moment it might have looked like all the staff had received a surprise sacking, but not really an excuse to get out your pet grievance about large organisational structures.
Re:HR Departments (Score:4, Informative)
The first corporation that has the insight to fire all its HR people will wipe the floor with its competition within 5 years. They will have all the advantages of a small business, mixed with the power of a corporation. And they will have MUCH happier, more productive, employees.
I agree, until of course, someone critical leaves and they discover "Opps, we didn't have a non-compete or even a non-solicit signed by them." Or "We're being sued because some manager violated a bunch of employment laws during the hiring process." That person we just hired as a driver? It would have been nice to know he had six DUIs before we gave him the keys to one of out trucks.
Re:Wrong (Score:2, Informative)
No, half have below median productivity. If you have several incredibly, almost equally brilliant people and one utterly incompetent idiot, it's possible for one one person to be below average. /pedant
Re:Wrong (Score:4, Informative)
Try dealing with Dell Business.
They keep reorganizing, firing, and promoting people that by the time the ink is dry on their business cards the extensions no longer work.
I'm not joking. I can go through any contact more than 6 months old and their phone number in their signature is dead. Emailing them entails a 24 hour turnaround time to get the new person assigned to your account to contact you.
Nice people, but very weird communication infrastructure.
Re:Wrong (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Wrong (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Wrong (Score:5, Informative)
average != median. Woosh !
That is incorrect. The median is most certainly a type of average. The mean is another type of average, and the mode is yet another type of average. Most of the time, when people say "average", they are referring to the mean, but all three of those are averages.
In addition, it's generally a good assumption that productivity at a company will follow a normal distribution, in which case the median and the mean have the same value.
Re:Giant Mistake? (Score:5, Informative)
It was invented by Disney during WW2 to help train soldiers to fight nazis. yes, they were trained by cartoons.
Snafu was actually Private Snafu, who just fucked up everything he touched. Don't be like Private Snafu.
It does mean "Situation normal all fucked up"
Re:Giant Mistake? (Score:5, Informative)
It was invented by Disney during WW2 to help train soldiers to fight nazis.
That sounded facinating, but when I went to learn more I found that Wikipedia disagrees with you [wikipedia.org]. It cites several uses of the word prior to the creation of Private Snafu [wikipedia.org].
Still, it was interesting to find out about the Disney shorts. I must watch some on Youtube once my boss have left the building!