In the early 90’s, when I was part of a company that was once a household name but suddenly took the path to extinction, a curious trend came into the company’s daily routine: senior officers, occupying large rooms with nameplates on the doors, seen attending meetings at 11 a.m., were abruptly history at 6 p.m – their rooms were stripped bare, the nameplates removed, the officer never again to be seen in those premises. And no one ever knew what exactly had happened.
This, we gradually learned, was a phenomenon called Asked To Go, and was soon to become an intrinsic part of most Indian companies’ delivered HR functionality. Nearly thirty years later, I find that this practice has indeed been woven into the fabric of standard organisational people practices - to such an extent that I am moved to wonder why companies do not hire Heads – Talent Disposal with the same elan as they recruit Heads – Talent Acquisition.
ATG is like the sword of Damocles – it knows no rules, and it can fall without warning. Moreover, it does not differentiate between meritorious employees and non-achievers: I remember a shocked banker telling me that his colleague in an adjacent room , rated “A” for 3 years running, had been told to go because his “role was no longer relevant”; another banker who was promoted to VP in the past year was shipped out the next year because her role had been “merged”. And there is nothing in the ATG process in most organisations that permits it to be practised with dignity or with consideration, or indeed, with the employee’s interest in mind – borne out most recently by a viral audio clip of an anguished employee who was given his notice pay cheque and told to leave the same evening.
Astonishingly, the capacity to perform ATG is actually being viewed these days as a special skill – I am informed that some HR heads actually trumpet this activity as a specialization or an achievement. I am at a loss to understand how stamping on an ant, as it were, can be viewed as a skill or, for that matter, an achievement, in any country, in any era, anywhere.
The hapless employee is gradually beginning to realise that there are no guarantees, and that (s)he has to look out for himself / herself. The casualty of this situation is loyalty and ownership – and with some employees, it is ethics. I have met several employees who have been affected by ATG displacements – the reactions span the entire spectrum from rage to depression, but the effect remains the same: the employee is scarred, and his or her entire perspective of employment and employers changes, occasionally with disastrous future results.
Seasoned HR professionals argue that ATG is a necessary pimple in an organisation’s route to maturity, to lean management, to sustainable profitability. Perhaps they are right; but then, compassion doesn’t have to take a holiday in the process. There is a wrong way of doing everything, just as there is a right way – and HR departments need to understand that IR never stood for “Inhuman Resource” in the first place. Companies are about people, and sometimes those people have to go, but that departure needs to be a send-off, and not an ejection.
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