Microsoft and others are showing us what not to do when eliminating jobs
There is no good way to eliminate thousands of jobs. But as recent layoffs in tech and banking have shown, there are better and worse ways to do it. This applies not only to the layoffs themselves, but also to what the company is doing around the same time.
MicrosoftFor her part, she came under fire this week for hosting an exclusive party in Davos where attendees enjoyed a party Live performance by Sting Tuesday evening, as well Wall Street Journal mentioned. It is not clear what the company paid the artist, but $500,000 It wouldn’t be surprising.
The next day, the company announced that it was Lay off 10,000 people. CEO Satya Nadella sent an email to employees when the news broke, reading: “We will treat our employees with dignity and respect, and act with transparency. These decisions are difficult but necessary.” But Sting’s own performance set up near the devastating ad was undoubtedly heart-wrenching.
“I am a huge Satya Nadella fan, but this is a very bad executive symbol,” chirp Rita Gunther McGrath is a professor at Columbia Business School and author of the book The end of competitive advantage.
in sales force This month, employees were called to an all-hands meeting the day after the company announced layoffs affecting 8,000 employees. But many of the attendees were stunned when CEO Marc Benioff Dodge questions about layoffs Instead, he gave a two-hour speech that many considered a slur. On the internal Slack channel, I mentioned insideOne employee wrote, “Is Mark disrupting his 47,600+ employees right now by talking in circles and avoiding the topic at hand?”
“Space for humanity” in layoffs
in TwitterThousands have been laid off after Elon Musk’s chaotic takeover. Several emails were sent only signed by the company that you read“It is with regret that we are writing to inform you that your role at Twitter has been affected,” and then we had to wait months for official termination agreements, which came Less than they expected. Even worse, the agreements were emailed via a third-party service in what appeared to be a phishing attempt.
“Tough decisions have to be made from time to time. Quick decisions too. But there should always be room for humanity in the process,” Gemma Dale, founder of HR firm The Work Consultancy, chirp After the layoff on Twitter.
in Goldman Sachs This month, employees are even showing up Seemingly routine meetings— to whom calendar invites were sent — find out instead that they’re losing their jobs. As one worker said New York Post From a colleague’s experience, “The meeting was put on its calendar under false pretenses.”
Asked about the tactic, the bank, which laid off 3,200 workers this month, sent a statement with it. luck Read: “We know this is a difficult time for people leaving the company. We are grateful for all of our employees’ contributions, and we offer support to ease their transitions.”
luck She also reached out to Microsoft, Twitter, and Salesforce but did not receive any immediate responses.
“People are left out,” Dale adds. comment. “How you do it is everything. You follow the politics, you follow the law. That’s the absolute minimum. The rest is about decency and empathy and compassion. Treating people like human beings. How would you like to be treated if that happened to you.”
This story originally appeared on Fortune.com
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