Stefan Mileschin

More than 1,300 employees of London-based Aviva Investors were fired by email and by accident.

According to the Star, workers received an email from HR telling them to hand over company property and security passes before leaving the building, even though the email was actually intended for only one person.

The email reminded them of contractual obligations about retaining any confidential information pertaining to Aviva Investors operations, systems and clients.

The letter was sent to Aviva's staff of 1,300 people, with bases in the US, UK, France, Spain, Sweden, Canada, Italy, Ireland, Germany, Norway, Poland, Switzerland, Belgium, Austria, Finland and the Netherlands.

It took 25 minutes before Aviva's HR department realised the error and released another email apologising to the entire staff.

The person the email intended for was a someone who was leaving on the day, but it was sent to all Aviva Investors staff worldwide.

A company spokesperson said that staff would have known better. However, that might not have been the case.

Two days prior, Aviva's CEO Andrew Moss said he would be overhauling the board and booting Aviva's corporate head, as well as the heads of Europe and North America. The outfit is about to cut 160 jobs, roughly 12 percent of its global worldforce. We would have thought that would mean that many of the staff would have entertained the idea that they had been fired a lot longer than HR believed.

http://news.techeye.net/security/avi...ees-by-mistake