Layoff Tactics Keep Changing, and the Blunders Keep Coming
- Amazon informed staffers via a text-email combo. Target asked workers to stay home. Does any of that make job cuts less painful?*
When Amazon started laying off 14,000 employees last month, some workers got a text at home telling them to check their email.
The email subject line read: "Update Regarding Your Role at Amazon." Inside: "Unfortunately, your role is being eliminated." Employees could join a voluntary meeting with a company leader or HR rep to ask questions. Some thought: Why bother?
Source: https://www.wsj.com/business/layoff-job-cut-strategy-changes-9b8ef26a
The quick text-email approach shows how layoff tactics keep evolving. The pandemic brought individual Zoom calls and surprise HR meeting invites. Now, the goal is efficiency with fewer chances for public drama or group grieving.
Companies want to share bad news "as quickly as possible across a large swath of the employee population" to control the message and limit worker stress, said George Penn, a managing VP at Gartner who advises on staff cuts.
There's never a good way to tell employees they're losing their jobs, he said, but "you're looking for the least-bad option."
Many employees disagree. The newer methods have drawn criticism. "Who thought that was OK?" a user wrote about Amazon's layoffs. "When you lay people off with dignity, you prove your values are real. When you do it via text? You prove they were just words."
Recent layoffs have had other problems: inaudible Zoom calls, technical glitches. Some managers were cut out, unable to answer questions or explain dismissals to their teams.
## Why companies keep changing tactics
One reason is to prevent disruptions. Southwest Airlines closed corporate offices to most staff during its corporate layoffs earlier this year. Some employees learned their status at home on video calls in listen-only mode. Target told U.S. corporate employees to work from home the week in October when it conducted layoffs.
Remote layoff decisions prevent teary office goodbyes as workers leave conference rooms after bad news, according to HR specialists. It also solves a logistics problem: When companies cut thousands of workers at once, there usually aren't enough HR people or leaders for individual meetings.
## When things go wrong
Plenty can still fail. During Target's recent layoffs, some employees logged onto a Zoom call and hit an audio glitch in the first few minutes that stopped them from hearing parts of the conversation. The company later emailed workers to apologize and confirm they'd been laid off, according to a note viewed by The Wall Street Journal.
A Target spokesman acknowledged the audio issue but said the follow-up email was always planned. He added that the Zoom glitch didn't stop those in the meeting from hearing the information before the call ended.
Other cuts have led to bigger scenes. After media company Condé Nast said it would move Teen Vogue under Vogue.com and let some employees go, a group of workers confronted HR executive Stan Duncan outside his office to ask why. Video of the encounter spread fast online. Condé Nast later fired four participants in the office protest and suspended others.
The firings sparked their own protest in a rally outside Condé Nast headquarters in Lower Manhattan on Wednesday. New York Attorney General Letitia James attended, where people held signs saying, "Reinstate the Fired Four." James threatened to take Condé Nast to court.
A Condé Nast spokeswoman said those terminations were lawful and based on clear policy violations. "We have an obligation to protect our workplace from harassment and intimidation," she said. "If the attorney general has concerns, we are happy to respond."
Some companies warn in advance that layoffs are coming to soften the blow, though that can create anxiety too. Verizon Communications CEO Daniel Schulman indicated in an all-hands meeting recently that layoffs were coming, according to someone familiar with the matter. The company plans to eliminate roughly 15,000 jobs in the coming days, its largest cuts ever, the Journal previously reported.
## Does any of this matter?
Veteran HR specialists say yes. The tone and style of a layoff discussion can greatly affect how employees process a dismissal.
"For a lot of people, the way it's communicated to them actually will reduce the chances that it's a negative separation," said Vanessa Matsis-McCready, VP of HR services at Engage PEO, which handles HR functions for small and midsize businesses.
To prepare companies, she often suggests HR executives role-play layoff interactions. When she does such exercises with clients, Matsis-McCready often plays a frustrated or emotional employee learning of a layoff.
"I've cried. I've done very angry responses," she said. "It is really important to be prepared for any type of response."
The goal is to learn how to calm a situation and respond with care. A one-on-one conversation with an employee that goes well can help prevent a laid-off worker from posting on social media or voicing anger elsewhere.
"When you're laying somebody off," she said, "you're trying to be human about it."