I am not making this up. The question was posed to The Workologist at the New York Times, and it reminded me of other passive-aggressive methods I occasionally hear about in my management and supervision workshops: omitting the employee's name from meeting invitations, assigning no work to the person, or--yes, you heard it here--texting a job elimination notice.

 

You might well ask, whatever happened to old-school performance feedback talks? But you probably know the answer: We all became more "efficient" with emailing, instant messaging, texting and, simultaneously, much much busier. (No, I'm not going to bash electronic communication.)

 

Add to that our increasing fear of litigation and you now have 15 to 20 years of practice in impersonal, transactional performance management, the kind of thing that results in just sending underperforming employees straight to HR to "be talked to."

 

Even with the highly competent HR managers with whom I usually work, such experiences are by definition more intimidating and management-distancing than they need to be. I shudder to think what happens when less-competent HR managers are involved.

 

To his credit, The Workologist advised talking to the employee--yes!--to let the person know just how jeopardized his job was and why.