Microsoft has taken a page out of the Spike Lee playbook and done the right thing.
The software giant has done an about-face on asking laid-off employees to pay back overpayments in severance made due to a clerical error on the company’s part.
According to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Microsoft’s senior vice president of human resources, Lisa Brummel, said she “personally called 22 of the 25” people who had received notices that they would have to pay back the overpayments.
The former Microsoft employees affected were part of the group of 1,400 workers the company laid off in January.
Seattle Post-Intelligencer reporter Joseph Tartakoff interviewed Brummel, who said the overpayments “ranged from hundreds of dollars to $5,000 per employee.”
According to the Post-Intelligencer, “I don’t think it’s worthy of us asking them to make that payment back to us,” Brummel said.
In addition, the article said, “20 employees were underpaid severance, and Microsoft has now paid them what they were owed.”