Lay-off or temporary suspension or permanent termination of employment of an employee or group of employees is dreaded. No person in his right mind would want to be laid-off. Employment nowadays is a must.

People need jobs to have a decent wage. If an employee is a family man, it would really be difficult for him to lose his job. He would be thinking where he could get food to serve for his children.

That is why it is important for management to announce the lay-off in a nice way so as not to hurt the feelings of their employees.

The following is an example of a letter on how to announce a lay-off to your employees.

SAMPLE

December 01.2010

Alpha-Omega Corporation
1234 Narrow Road
Rainbow, PA 10987

Dear Employee,

Our company is now on the verge of closing. It is hard for us to generate income at this point because the demand for our product has slowed. Our production expenses continue to increase while our sales fail to generate. Many manufacturing business like ours have decided to close their establishments.

This global crisis has affected our revenue, yet our expenses continue to rise up. The officers of our company conducted a meeting to come up with a solution to this problem.

Our only option for now is either to close the business or to lay-off at least 20% of our employees. We have decided to do the difficult choice of having to lay-off some of our employees. Please understand that we do not have any other choice at this time.

It is a company policy and it is also in accordance with our company by-laws that those hired last will be the first affected. We are asking for your understanding. We know the pain of losing a job. You have been loyal to the company all these time.

Those who will be separated will receive all their benefits in full. The company will also provide separation pay to help. We assure you that if things will get better for our company, we will give notice our laid-off employees for them to come back and work here again.

Thank you for your attention and understanding.

John Smith
President-CEO