Been told to resign voluntarily

I had personally received bad news consecutively...

I had been called to enter for a private one to one discussion session at office, and somehow I had been told to resign voluntarily. It was not a shocking news to me, as I had personally felt that this might happen sooner or later, with the current situation faced by company in the local market.

Hence, I asked if this is a Voluntary Separation Scheme (VSS), and my business manager had proudly said that it was not VSS. He asked me to tender resignation, and work as usual to serve the resignation notice, and then to leave. In this situation, he had emphasized that it was not VSS, and there will be no compensation, and would like to see me to tender my resignation by the month end. Since there is no other third person in the discussion room, I wish not to continue the discussion with him, and told him that I will consider about it.

On the next day, I had inquire with HR about this, and they had informed me that they were not aware of it. "Slow to hire, quick to fire", is quite a risk to the management, as it is not easy for an employer to lay-off their employee without proper compensation or without proper documentation to fire. At the moment, the business manager is pretending that he has nothing to do with it, and company HR had informed saying that since they are not being notified at all for such incident; I had been told to work as usual.

However, the company had express that they might want to downsize and would really hope to have less head counts. I guess, this served as a "hint" from the higher management that they would like to proceed with the official lay-off per stages. Therefore, I had been told to quickly look for a job, and to tender my resignation as soon as possible. What is more inhumane to hear, was that the business director had express his point of view from higher management perspective, and he had spit out unconsciously that he can easily issue letter of misconduct to lay-off employee immediately.

What could have been worst than, you lost job, and place to stay soon?

Since company is not willing to appreciate you, hence, it is time to leave the company soon.

P/S: Some HR friends had gave in some valuable feedback regarding to this.

1. If there is no warning letter prior to the issue of Letter of Misconduct, the employee is entitle to file in a complaint with Malaysia Labour office (Jabatan Buruh Malaysia).

2. If the Management if allowing the lay-off, the letter should be signed by either the business director or business manager to acknowledge that they knew about it. The letter should not be from HR alone, and the employee should not act by just listening verbally. It should be all documented.

3. Should the business manager wish to proceed with company lay-off, they have to ensure there is a third person present in the discussion room, which is preferably the HR personnel.

4. If the company wish to proceed with the lay-off, they have to pay the compensation according to the letter of employment resignation period. This is applicable to those employees earning more than RM2500 basic. Hence, no company is allowed to lay-off their employee without proper compensation. This could be brought in to industrial court shall the employer is being ignorant about compensation.