Up in the air

For the first time in my life, I found myself identifying with George Clooney this week. Sadly, neither with his looks nor with his money and the other benefits of being a Hollywood superstar. But rather with an aspect of the character he plays in the excellent new movie, Up in the air.

Ryan Bingham is a high-flying downsizing consultant who zigzags across America, visiting companies to fire employees who are no longer needed but whose bosses want to outsource the job of letting them go.

"High-flying" is the operative word for Clooney’s character because he spends an inordinate amount of time  jetting between one US city and another, racking up the frequent-flier miles.

Having taken six flights in the past week, I felt as though I was watching myself on screen as we saw Clooney going through the various check-in and security procedures with robotic automaticity.

(At this point, I would like to make it clear that I was not the 50-year-old-ish businessman who caused a security alert at Munich airport a week ago by walking off with his laptop before the security procedures were complete.)

The most fascinating part of Clooney's film is the way he tells the employees that their jobs are “no longer available” and encourages them to “focus on their futures”. An added twist is that, in an attempt to cut the costs of these redundancy conversations, Clooney’s firm toys with the idea of carrying them out remotely, via a video link-up.

Lucy Kellaway, the reliably entertaining management columnist at the Financial Times, suggested this week that Clooney’s character was not credible. Her reason was that he is just too good-looking.

Kellaway said her research had shown that there are very few good-looking men in the upper echelons of the American corporate world. She also claimed that being fired is “even less nice if the man with the axe has a full head of hair and beautiful brown eyes that shine on his victim with fake compassion”.

I don’t know about that. I do know, however, that firing someone is a thoroughly unpleasant experience. Fortunately, unlike Clooney's character, I have had to sack only two members of staff over the past 15 years.

But unpleasant though they are, such sackings should always be done by the boss of the person concerned. The bad news should be communicated clearly at the start and the employee should not be left up in the air about the situation in an attempt to soften the blow.

Actually, Clooney is rather good at such conversations in the film. He is just the wrong person to be doing them – good-looking or not.