Employees who feel mistreated during a job-elimination process may be wrongful-termination lawsuits in the making.

One study of displaced employees found that 15 percent of workers who felt their severance experience lacked dignity or respect had filed wrongful-termination lawsuits.

Even though that's not a big percentage of laid-off or otherwise eliminated workers, it can be a very expensive minority for employers.

When such wrongful-termination cases make it to juries, plaintiffs find a lot of sympathy among their peers. One 2003 report, cited by outplacement service provider Right Management, found that juries gave an average award of $388,128 to the terminated workers.

Right Management and other outplacement service providers recommend "risk mitigation" practices for employers. Those include severance benefits and a kinder, gentler way of communicating job cuts.

Some general advice includes having a severance professional present to provide information about applying for unemployment benefits, obtaining job-transition support services, and receiving any employer benefits or paychecks due the departing employee.

And, under the theory that a good defense is the best offense, it helps employers to work extra hard to sustain the morale of surviving employees. That partly happens when employees are given honest, current information about employers' financial condition and the reasons for the pink slips handed to their peers.

The Five O'Clock Club, a New York-based outplacement firm, offers these kinder, gentler pointers to employers:

- Have termination procedures in writing and fully train managers who may be delivering the notices.

- Include sensitivity training in the matter of "human hurt."

- Lace the bad news with positive statements such as, "George, you've always been a trooper; you helped us for 15 years, and I'm sorry that the organization has moved in a different direction now."

- Explain why the organization is cutting staff, merging or closing, and be ready to answer questions about why someone was selected for dismissal.

- Have a severance package and be ready to explain details.

- Unless it's a firing for cause, do not require the worker to leave the premises immediately; do not escort the worker to the door in front of co-workers.

— Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.