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Exit & Continuity

Layoffs, firing, severance, exit intelligence, and alumni relationships — handled with dignity and legal defensibility.

Start with the pillar Jump to scenarios (9)

The Pillar

Start here — the foundational read.

Severance Frameworks: The Math, the Law, and the Signal

What severance actually is in different jurisdictions, how HR leaders design a defensible framework, and the trade-offs between formulas, discretion, and…

14 min readAdvancedRead the pillar

Scenarios

9 situations, each with a step-by-step script.

Every scenario is self-contained — open whichever one matches what's on your desk this week.

Advanced22 min

Layoff playbook: WARN, selection defensibility, comms cascade, survivor syndrome

The 30-day playbook to run a reduction in force with legal defensibility and human dignity — WARN Act mechanics, defensible selection criteria, the comms…

Open scenario

Intermediate12 min

Exit Interviews That Actually Produce Signal

Why most exit interviews collect noise, and the redesign HR experts use to produce data leadership will act on — including the right timing, the right…

Open scenario

Intermediate12 min

Alumni Networks: The Most Underused Talent Asset HR Owns

How HR teams build alumni networks that pay dividends in rehires, referrals, customers, and reputation — without the political risk of curating who is 'in'.

Open scenario

Advanced16 min

Firing someone humanely: the script, the severance math, the reference policy

How to terminate a single employee with dignity and defensibility — the 8-minute conversation script, the severance formula most companies use, what you…

Open scenario

Advanced18 min

Telling a founder their cofounder must go: the conversation no one teaches you

When a cofounder is no longer right for the company — and the other founder, the CHRO, or the board has to say so.

Open scenario

Advanced22 min

Firing Your First Executive: The Founder's Year-2 Crisis Playbook

Statistically, the first executive a founder hires has roughly a 50% chance of not making it past 18 months. A structured playbook for founders facing this…

Open scenario

Advanced14 min

RIF communication sequence: what to say, in what order, to whom — hour by hour

The 24 hours around a layoff are an operations problem, not a writing problem. A minute-by-minute comms sequence — managers first, affected next, surviving…

Open scenario

Advanced12 min

The survivor effect: rebuilding trust with the team that's still here

The 30 days after a layoff is when you lose the people you most wanted to keep. The six actions that stop the second wave — and the four mistakes that…

Open scenario

Advanced13 min

Voluntary separation programs: when they work, when they backfire, how to design one

A VSP can save you from a forced layoff — or hand the resignation pen to your strongest people. The design rules, eligibility math, and legal guardrails that…

Open scenario

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