The end of the notification should contain your signature, your name, and your title. The company can use this papers if the jobholder files a lawsuit. You should also conduct exit interviews of terminated workers. You'll often hear this term used for big company and government layoffs. Remember this rule, "if it's not written down, it didn't happen." So without written substantiation, the hearing officer won't believe your side of the story.

Grounds for terminating a jobholder are as varied as their faces. You can sack the worker when you're done with the preparation process. Start making these plans now, but don't start giving away those duties until after the lay off meeting. The most important steps come weeks before you layoff someone. Then make Tuesday the effective layoff date and tell the employee to return Tuesday to get his final check. My advice is you must continue with a high-risk termination only as a final alternative. Those methods can compromise the privacy of the sacked employee. Second, as we discussed in Chapters 2 and 3, a fired employee will often sue you even when laid off for legitimate reasons. o Did the witness contradict herself? o All of your former workforce will land on their feet, and for the most part get better jobs than they had previously. You can find a memorandum of recommendation template (Tool #6) following this outline in the jobholder Layoff Toolkit at the end of this book.