[mickeythug]

In some parts of Europe, it is very common to do “mutual termination”, since you cannot easily fire someone just on a whim. If you use the “redundancy” excuse, companies are usually prohibited from hiring again on the same position for 6 months. If you want to fire someone and not face this, there’s a very detailed process of what you have to do, before you can justify termination (documented first warning to the employee, steps they need to take to improve, second warning, proof that they didn’t so what was asked of them, etc).

Virtually no one goes through this, and they opt for mutual termination, and generally a person can negotiate a severance package for their signature (I have seen examples of people negotiating almost a year’s salary as severance), and they are out immediately.

But this is also a scare tactic and people get caught by surprise and sign anything, sometimes without any severance. During this past year, as mass layoffs were happening in waves, people got more informed about this and were smarter in negotiating their exits.