“What do I do if a recently terminated employee is badmouthing me, the employer, to my customers and remaining employees?” Great question! 😊This can happen to anyone…
This question is actually one I received while working with a client recently.
Because there are generally no prohibitions on an employee saying negative things about you after you terminate them, (except for provable defamation of course) your options are very limited.
In reality, ignoring this type of thing is almost always the best way to make it go away (despite how much we’d like to engage! 😊)
Then our client was faced with the dilemma of trying to explain things to her remaining employees WITHOUT disclosing more than general information about the reasons for termination.
(But it can get pretty stressful…)
In the face of the former employee making statements to the current employees that were completely out of context, she decided to ask her team to TRUST her that she would never let someone go without a compelling reason and that because she respected the former employee, she didn’t want to get into too many details.
