Ann Arbor team strives for graceful exits

11 July, 2007
Although roughly one-third of colleagues in Ann Arbor will be staying with Pfizer, the remainder will eventually exit the company, if they haven't done so already. The job of assisting colleagues in navigating this final process falls to a group of HR colleagues known as the Exit Team.

While it's not the most pleasant of tasks, the team tries to make the process as pleasant and easy as possible.
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"We don't want to make their last days here difficult, or have the last thing that they see inside Pfizer be a bad thing," says Team Leader Kathy M. "If we make this process as painless as possible, they can focus on other things that they need to be thinking about."

The Exit Team's duties include auditing the individualised separation package each eligible colleague receives. "We open each package and audit it, page by page, before the colleague receives it," says Debra B. The auditing ensures that each colleagues is getting precisely what he or she should receive based on years of service, salary, legacy pension plan, and other factors.

Team members also ensure that colleagues understand and complete the various tasks required to close out their active employment with the company and receive their severance. That includes turning in Amex cards and Blackberries; closing out or transferring cell phone accounts; disposing of, transferring, or archiving paper and electronic records properly; and all the other applicable requirements listed on the exiting Ann Arbor website.
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In the Official Notification Meeting, which occurs on or about a colleague's last day on site, the team processes the forms documenting that colleagues have, in fact, completed the required tasks. The team also presents colleagues with their individual separation packages.

If colleagues want to know more about the specific details their packages, they're referred to Ernst & Young. "They're our vendor," says Kathy M., "and they have a duplicate of each colleague's package so they're able to answer any questions."
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Initially, some team members approached their new role with trepidation. "I didn't know what to expect in the first few meetings," says Kathy D. "I didn't know if people would bring tomatoes and start throwing them or what. But it wasn't that way at all. People were smiling and saying humorous things to each other. It was so different from what I expected, and it's always been that way. Colleagues have been very professional.
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Firing employees had been elevated to an art form, apparently. Despite my mixed feelings, I couldn’t help being fascinated by their presentation. It was like listening to a law enforcement officer explain how to most effectively immobilize a prisoner.

We were told that we needed to choose an appropriate setting for the termination meetings. If we expected trouble, we could have an “exit team” waiting around the corner, invisible to the unsuspecting target. The exit team could, if needed, carry out a screaming and panicked employee who refused to leave, I suppose.

He could announce the “separation,” another euphemism for “firing” perhaps intended to make people associate it with simply being apart like a vacation—a long vacation.