What’s the lesson here?

Interesting article over at Interview Chatter titled “She Thought She Was Getting Fired.”

Quoting the article:

“When Marie Lupe Cooley, 41, of Jacksonville, Fla., saw a help-wanted ad in the newspaper for a position that looked suspiciously like her current job — and with her boss’s phone number listed — she assumed she was about to be fired.

So, police say, she went to the architectural office where she works late Sunday night and erased 7 years’ worth of drawings and blueprints, estimated to be worth $2.5 million.”

As a manager, what’s the lesson here? I think there are a few we can learn:

• Communicate with your employees, especially ones who hold the keys to your company’s success – If Ms. Cooley deleted all these files after just seeing a job posting, how often has her manager communicated with her that she’s doing a good job, and she has nothing to worry about? More than likely her manager ASSUMES she knows she’s doing a great job, and we all know what happens to those who ass-u-me things, don’t we?

• Know if your employees are looking for work outside of your firm – This one’s a little tougher, but if you know your employees aren’t happy, what are you doing about it? Do you even care, or are they meaningless cogs in your wheel?

• Don’t hire unstable people – If all it took was a job posting with her boss’ name on it to fire her up, there had to be many other signs that were missed that proved her unstable.

What did you learn from this very interesting situation?