The 1 (and Only) Reason your Company is Offering you Severance
Whether you've been terminated, laid off, or even resigned, it's fairly normal for your company to offer you a severance package. If you've been laid off during something like a company-wide reduction in force, that sort of makes sense to most people.
Let's assume you work for a large tech company here in Puget Sound and an aspect of an emerging service or product doesn't pan out. There are weak quarterly earnings, and a few hundred people have to go. Most people would say: "Well that's fair. I'll take my package and find work somewhere else."
What if you're terminated for performance issues. A person could still impute good faith to the employer. A reasonable person could assume that it's standard to provide a severance package to all terminated employees at a certain level as long has they weren't let go for something like insubordination. Poor performance could just mean the job is not a good fit for you or the company. No harm, no foul. And, that's a reasonable and possible situation.
Let's now assume you just quit. You're packing up your desk. Lo and behold, there's an email from HR, and attached to that email is a severance package. It's not farfetched, and it happens all the time. In fact, it's becoming more and more common. But any rational person must ask themself, why are they offering me a severance package when I'm quitting?
For most people, that's where the inquiry ends. They sign the thing, take the check and move on. I'm here to tell you that your company doesn't care about you. They don't even care if they breaking the law by discriminating against you. They only ever care about anything when that thing either makes or loses them money. That's the nature of a company and capitalism. HR is not human resources. That's company propaganda. HR is legal liability management for your employer.
You're being offered a severance package for one, and only one reason. That reason is that severance agreement contains a release of legal claims. Your company is buying a get out of jail free card for bargain-basement price from you. Once you accept that money, your legal claims, known or unknown, evaporate.
Why does this matter? Because, whether you have a legal claim or not, your company wants to buy piece of mind from you. By signing, you are giving up rights that you currently possess. If you are going to sell some portion of your civil liberties, you might as well be well paid for that waiver of rights. I'm an employment lawyer here in Seattle, and I regularly negotiate these high-stakes severance deals for clients. And I always provide a free consultation for people seeking this type of representation.
Here's a link to a brief but informative video on the subject:
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