I read an article titled “Microsoft accounting error shows up as huge PR blunder” from bloggingstocks.com dated February 23, 2009. The main theme of the article is that Microsoft seemed to miscalculate the severance payments to some of its 1400 employees that they just recently laid off. They realized that they overpaid some of their ex employees and wanted their money back.
CNET news reported that Microsoft had sent out letters to the employees that had supposedly got overpaid. This seems like a very bad public relations move if you ask me. Microsoft is obviously a large company that makes a lot of money and if they accidentally overpaid some of its ex employers with their severance checks, then I think they should just bite the bullet and take the loss. If they would just do that it would not make them look like they are being stingy. I don’t feel that the little bit of money they probably overpaid it was going to hurt the company at all in the long run, or even the short run.
It turns out the next day that Microsoft decided not to ask its ex employees for the excess severance pay back. The Associated Press quoted Lisa Brummel, Microsoft's senior vice president for human resources as stating: "I decided it didn't quite feel right." I really think this was the best decision Microsoft could have made because people would look at Microsoft in the future and remember when they asked for money back from people they let go, it would just give them a bad image that they don’t need.
Microsoft did not release the amount that these overpayments were, but I am guessing they might be kind of large because they even considered sending out letters and asking for money back. I still think this was an unnecessary story because Microsoft shouldn’t have done anything when they realized they made a mistake.
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I cannot believe a huge corporation like Microsoft would even entertain the notion of asking for their money back! I understand that Microsoft is just trying to watch their pennies like the rest of us are doing, but that would have been taking it a little too far. I bet the total overpayment amount doesn’t even add up to $100,000, which is like $50 to us “common folk.”
ReplyDeleteMicrosoft’s name is already tarnished locally because of all the jobs they were promising the city that they have now reneged on. I don’t think this little “mishap” would have improved matters any. It was a wise decision on their part to cut all ties with that money and view it as a Good Samaritan action rather than an accounting error.
i agree with Heather 100%. when someone is laid off from from a corporation such as microsoft and than that company asks for money from you, i could not imagine the feelings those former workers had. microsofts works dodged a bullet when they decided against asking for money from their former employers.
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