Sample Termination Letter

A Termination Letter which is also called a lay-off notice, a notice of termination, or a pink slip is a document that is given to an employee by the employer or HR department when it has been fired from the job. Managers give this letter to their fired or laid-off employee once they have done a termination meeting with him usually in the presence of an HR representative. It’s very common in private organizations that owners fire employees due to a single mistake and they also mention that mistake(s) on the termination letter to prove that they haven’t done anything wrong and that the employee deserved to be fired. It’s a painful fact that almost every person gets fired in his career at least once in his life either due to his blunder or because the company is downsizing. Firing employees is a routine task for the HR department but most organizations try not to fire their workers and grant them another chance every time they make a mistake that too doesn’t happen all the time and there will be a limit after that you will be awarded a termination letter.

Another big reason for firing employees is that when a company loses its position in the market or goes bankrupt, its management fires most of the staff to lower the loss and this process is called downsizing. Although a company is making enormous profits or has good credibility in the market, it may downsize because when the management realizes that there is a department that is not producing as much profit as others it’s just a waste of time to continue it. So managers eliminate that department and fire all the employees working in that department. Unlike just firing the employees, when a company downsizes, it awards its terminated employees with compensations and benefits which help them to heal the pain of getting fired for a while. The termination letter also includes all those benefits along with the actual reason for firing.

Generally, a termination letter has to include the following information:

The steps the employer has taken to advise the employee about his performance.
The actual causes that got him fired.
The length of the notice period and the payment the employee will be awarded in lieu of that notice period.
And the final date when his employment in the company will end.

General Guidelines to write a Termination Letter:

The managers are required to constantly keep an eye on the employees and warn them when they are not producing the expected output or doing something wrong. This way the employee is aware of the reasons that got him fired.
You have to tell him what he or she did was unexpected and the company can’t bear the outcomes of that misbehavior. This way the employee is fully aware of his mistakes and doesn’t just assume something which can lead to a huge conflict in the future.
If the employee has been warned in the past several times and told that if he continues this behavior he might lose his job, it’s important to add that information to the termination letter.
If there are chances that by improving his performance, he can get his job back, it’s necessary to add that to the termination letter.

Here is a preview of a Free Sample Termination Letter created using MS Word,