Showing benevolence towards two dozen laid-off employees who were overpaid severance by mistake, the Redmond, Washington-based software maker Microsoft, on Monday, announced that the overpaid laid-off employees need not return the overpaid money to the company.

Microsoft’s head of human resources stated that the company will not seek repayment of the overpaid severance funds from 25 of its former employees, who were laid-off last month.

In an e-mailed statement, Microsoft said, "This was a mistake on our part. We should have handled this situation in a more thoughtful manner. We are reaching out to those impacted to relay that we will not seek any payment from those individuals."

Last week, Microsoft via letters to some of the 1,400 employees, who were the first lot of laid-off workers under the company’s plan to cut up to 5,000 jobs, asked them to return the overpaid severance, which occurred due to an "administrative error." The letters got huge coverage in the tech world, which probably compelled the company to change its decision, which it did on Monday.

According to Lisa Brummel, the senior vice president of human resources for Microsoft, out of 25 people who were overpaid, she had informed 17 via telephone that they could keep the money, and she left messages for the rest.

Lisa Brummel said, "This first came to my attention two days ago, and I immediately told my staff to stop following through. Since then, I have called each one, to let them know they do not need to repay the money, and apologized to them."

She told that the guys were "very pleased that the company did the right thing. They were quite impressed that I picked up the phone and called them personally."