With the rise in unemployment and unsure state of today's economy, many companies find themselves laying off employees and making other reductions to stay afloat without taking into consideration the possible ramifications on their businesses.

The Washington Times and Newsweek discuss how job loss has grown into one of the largest stressors in life. Both articles discuss how the stress of a layoff led to disastrous results at homes.

Mark Meeks, 51 from Whitehall, Ohio killed his wife and two children after he lost his job. That case came just one week after Ervin and Ana Elizabeth Lupoe of Los Angeles, California committed suicide after killing their five children. The Lupoes wrote in their suicide note: "After a horrendous ordeal, my wife felt it better to end our lives; and why leave our children in someone else's hands ... we have no job and five children under eight years with no place to go."

Another recent article discusses how a union worker in Memphis, Tennessee felt he was forced out of his job and retaliated against former co-workers by returning to his workplace to physically assault a supervisor at his former place of employment."Workplace Bullying" also has become a hot topic due to the stress placed on workers to overproduce in an understaffed environment.

When you combine the emotionally-charged potential of the above incidents, you can see how workplace violence incidents tend to occur more frequently during times with high unemployment rates. An unprepared management team without a solid Workplace Violence Prevention Program can find themselves worrying about more than maintaining operations if an employee takes matters into his or her own hands.

Huffmaster offers cost-effective and comprehensive Workplace Violence Prevention and Termination Support programs dedicated to help prepare and assist our clients with layoffs, firings or plant closings.

In today's society, you have to ensure the safety of your management team and employees. With Huffmaster's programs, our security experts discuss potential liabilities and ways to increase your safety and security in the case of an office incident or returning fired employee. We also can provide deterrence at your facility during layoffs by using our trained security officers to escort terminated employees from your building and off premises.

While these programs are dedicated mainly to curbing violence from a fired employee, you also need to take into consideration the potential financial ramifications of your employee termination program.

A recent survey by the Ponemon Institute of individuals who were laid off, fired or quit their jobs in the past 12 months showed that 59% of them admitted to stealing company data and 67% used their former company's confidential information to leverage a new job.

The research firm also found 61% of respondents who felt negatively about the company took data while only 26% of those with a favorable view did. The survey participants also said 37% were asked to leave, 38% said they had found a new job and 21% moved on because they anticipated layoffs.

Taking e-mail-related information and hardcopy files were the most popular types of documents to walk away with, according to the survey. Theft was carried out by simply walking out with paper documents or transferring data onto a CD, DVD, USB memory stick or sending documents out as e-mail attachments to a personal e-mail account.

Huffmaster can assist you with designing a proper employee termination program to help control potential theft of information or sabotage of equipment at your facilities. Such incidents will affect your company's bottom line more than you think especially if it involves some type of product tampering – or results in causing an injury to an employee on-site.

For more information, you can download Huffmaster's free Adobe Acrobat PDF cutsheets by clicking on the following links: Workplace Violence Prevention, Termination Support and Plant Closing.

For immediate needs, please contact Eric Graybill at 800.446.1515, ext. 133 or by e-mail at egraybill@huffmaster.com.