2 Slayings Raise Questions About Employee Firings
The disgruntled former employee accused of the shotgun slaying of two executives at Elgar Corp. in Miramar on June 4 provided a grim reminder to local executives that the hiring and firing of employees remains an inexact science.
Officials allege that Larry T. Hansel, 41, a former technician at Elgar, took control of the electronics company, and, after setting firebombs as a diversion, shot two executives. Hansel, who subsequently surrendered at a Riverside County sheriff’s substation in Palm Desert, is scheduled for arraignment Wednesday in San Diego.
The Elgar incident is a decidedly hot topic among local human resources executives, according to Mel Knoepp, a San Diego-based vice president with Drake Beam & Morin, a nationwide outplacement services firm that provides job-search assistance for terminated employees.
Because of the shootings, “there has been a lot of attention paid to internal security,” Knoepp said Monday. “They all recognize that an incident like this calls into question security procedures . . . . A lot of attention is going to be paid to security regarding access by outsiders.”
But, “unfortunately, like most people,” business executives “typically close the barn door after the horse is out,” said a human resources expert who asked that his name not be used. “And, think about it: If (a disgruntled employee) can’t get to you at work, what’s to stop him from getting you at home?”
Local executives also know that even the toughest safety precautions can fail, as was the case in December, 1987, when a disgruntled former USAir employee smuggled a gun through airport security in Los Angeles and onto a Pacific Southwest Airlines airplane bound for San Francisco.
Investigators subsequently blamed the crash of PSA Flight 1771 on David A. Burke, a 15-year USAir veteran who evidently killed a USAir manager who was in the plane’s passenger compartment. Burke allegedly killed the plane’s pilots, sending the plane that carried 43 people into a death spiral that ended when the jet crashed near Paso Robles.
In interviews after the crash, some of Burke’s former co-workers described the long-time USAir employee as an “even-tempered” man who rarely expressed anger. Burke was terminated after being accused of stealing money from the airline.
Short of bolstering security, managers can do relatively little to defend themselves against violent behavior by disaffected former employees, according to N. Bruce Ferris, founder of the Compensation Practices Assn. of San Diego County, which tracks compensation, hiring and firing at about 50 local companies.
“You don’t get much help, really, from any agency,” Ferris said. “They simply can’t respond to that kind of a threat.”
Rather than simply relying upon tougher security, corporations increasingly are turning to outplacement companies that help laid-off employees find new jobs. “Outplacement last year was a $500-million industry,” said Jack Higgins, a San Diego-based vice president with Lee Hecht Harrison, a nationwide outplacement service firm.
“The big issue is sensitivity . . . how you deal with people when you’re terminating them,” Higgins said. “We see people every day who have been laid off or terminated because of downsizing, a merger or an acquisition. Some of them are angry, but not so much that it happened as the way it happened. . . . It’s handled poorly, and that’s the issue.”
Larger companies also are turning to pre-employment testing in an attempt to get a handle on a potential employee’s ability to weather stress.
Nancy Haller, a psychologist who works with corporate clients, including San Diego Transit, believes that testing can help employers determine whether stress is going to generate an adverse reaction.
Although testing alone won’t uncover potential problems, “someone with a fixation on guns and violence will send up red flags everywhere,” Haller said. A “disturbed individual . . . would probably be picked up beforehand.”
Testing, in conjunction with interviews and background checks, also can protect employers from on-the-job problems. “You want to know if someone has good stress tolerance,” Haller said. “You want to know if they can cope well when there’s lots of pressure on them.”
Human resources managers acknowledge that they do worry about former employees who are bent on revenge.
Steve St. Pierre, manager of human resources for San Diego Transit Corp., said “there are a few people you wonder about” after they are let go for cause. Those people “make you look over your shoulder,” St. Pierre said.
Letting employees go can be “real difficult . . . even if everything is done exactly right,” St. Pierre said. “But, if someone is going to have propensity to blow or have problems psychologically . . . there’s really no way you can find it.”
St. Pierre said he takes solace in the fact that San Diego Transit, which has not been forced to lay off employees recently because of economic reasons, does its best to “help turn people around” before letting them go.
“You follow your policies and procedures. . . . You take all the steps,” St. Pierre said. “You hope that you’ve given the person every opportunity prior to termination to try and turn it around.”
“With stress levels what they are these days, of course you worry” about disgruntled employees, Ferris said. “There’s a great deal of fear of what might be done in a fit of anger.”
