Comments on: Managing communications during a layoff – whether you’re letting someone go or not.

By: Melissa

Melissa — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 04:02:33 +0000

Great post. I was recently laid off from Yahoo!, and can completely attest to the fact that vague statements about impending layoffs do nothing but bad things to the morale.

Don’t get me wrong– I loved working for Yahoo!, and harbor no bad feelings and wish them nothing but success, but announcing the layoffs in October and making the cuts in December leaves a month and a half for employees to “fester.”

Fortunately/unfortunately, I was pretty confident I was safe until the very end when I was notified by my VP (which should be one more point to add to your list (though you did mention transparency)– over communicate whenever possible. My VP was able to let our team know that we were going, and because of that I was incredibly appreciative and had a much more positive outlook on the layoff process. The reason why layoffs can be so terrible is because they suddenly present a cloud of ambiguity over the heads of employees. I digress,) so my team’s morale didn’t “fester.”

-Melissa
http://new2oldmedia.wordpress.com/2008/12/21/social-networking-and-the-hunt-for-a-new-job/

By: jenharris

jenharris — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 22:00:24 +0000

As soon as I got back to my desk from being laid off I instantly went to Twitter to let my network know. Not to bash on the company (we all knew it was coming) but to let my network know that I was on the market.
Twitter was down as was every other site except for my email. Ahhhh, my BlackBerry came in handy.
After packing as quickly as I could & sitting in the parking log for over an hour on Twitter, I had one job offer & two appointments for the next day.
The denial that a lot of companies have will only come back to their own demise.
All HR departments should read & internalize this.
Thanks for the great article.
-jen

By: Mike Bawden

Mike Bawden — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 19:06:37 +0000

I totally agree with you, Ruth.

In fact, there have been some recent announcements from companies saying they will reduce employment by several thousand over the next three years. Clearly, these kinds of announcements are intended more for the investment community than the prospective employee pool. After all, who would want to take a job with an employer who has stated their intention of cutting tens of thousands of positions if they were really going to go through with it?

For small and mid-sized businesses though (the fine folks who read this blog, for example), transparency with your employees is key. Instead of announcing “future” layoff plans, why not create an open discussion of what needs to change in order to ensure long-term employment in the future. Employees who understand they have a role to play in their own job security can be pretty amazing once they realize they’re empowered to make a difference.

Any thoughts?

Mike

By: Ruth Seeley

Ruth Seeley — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 18:50:00 +0000

Vague announcements (such as, ‘we will be reducing our workforce by 20% over the course of the next five years’) are the absolute worst – they send a message to existing employees that they’d better find somewhere else to work, and to potential employees the message is received as ‘this is not an employer of choice.’ Have seen this happen in government organzations time and time again – horrible.