> On April 29, Hootsuite CEO Ryan Holmes emailed staff saying layoffs were coming and would be completed by end-of-day on April 30. He said the firm would give a “full debrief” at a town hall meeting on May 2. “I appreciate these next few hours will be stressful,” he wrote.
> Some employees said they waited at their desks the rest of the day for news about who would be affected. The majority of the cuts were in North America and Asia, with the Singapore office being closed entirely, according to a post from one employee. The company’s European workforce also saw reductions."
> “The way this was handled…was insane,” wrote one employee. “You try sitting all day with that email hanging over your head and then being let go and bundled out the door as if you are a risk to company moral [sic] – as if anything could be more demoralizing than seeing valued colleagues get frog marched out of the office as they are crying. Absolute shit show.”
I wonder if there is a management chapter somewhere that walks you through how to do a mass layoff? Telling everyone to sit at their desks and wait to see what happens.. seems like a bad option. I guess there are no real good options here but this seems extremely stressful and rushed.
There are definitely better options though. At least warn people and give them a chance to make plans. Years ago I worked at a startup during the first dot-com crash. The president and the CEO had a falling out and decided to split up the company and spin the software development side into it's own biz under the former CEO. After a few months the upper management decided to lay-off 90% of the new company's employees without warning. All of whom previously worked at the parent company, some for several years. The few employees that weren't laid-off were told to stay home that day and none of the managers or the even the CEO showed up either. Everyone else came into work with a form letter waiting on their desks telling them they'd been fired. Nice to see nothing has changed in the industry over the past 20 years.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 17.8 ms ] thread> Some employees said they waited at their desks the rest of the day for news about who would be affected. The majority of the cuts were in North America and Asia, with the Singapore office being closed entirely, according to a post from one employee. The company’s European workforce also saw reductions."
> “The way this was handled…was insane,” wrote one employee. “You try sitting all day with that email hanging over your head and then being let go and bundled out the door as if you are a risk to company moral [sic] – as if anything could be more demoralizing than seeing valued colleagues get frog marched out of the office as they are crying. Absolute shit show.”
I wonder if there is a management chapter somewhere that walks you through how to do a mass layoff? Telling everyone to sit at their desks and wait to see what happens.. seems like a bad option. I guess there are no real good options here but this seems extremely stressful and rushed.