During an important meeting called “Organizational Update”, Amazon employees experienced something more like a painful breakup over text rather than a professional conversation. A manager read from a corporate script, informing an employee that their position had vanished into thin air. After years of dedicated service, this speech evoked the same cringe-y feelings as getting dumped by someone who never really knew your favorite ice cream flavor.
Feeling hurt and low-key betrayed, the anonymous employee said, “I’m a human being dangit! All I wanted was for this to be a little more ‘Dear John’ and less ‘Pass the Standard Script’; you feel me?” Amazon tried to make things less terrible by keeping access to internal stuff open. Oh, and Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post, NBD.
Once upon a time, remote workers had to be laid off over email. But even now that some people have returned to the office, companies are still practicing virtual guillotine (ouch!). People are comparing it to a breakup over text – cold, distant, and definitely not the kind of news you want via email.
Jessica Kriegel, chief scientist of workplace culture (hello, cool title!) at Culture Partners, admitted that virtual layoffs can be a little less awful if handled delicately- kind of like how you’d treat your best friend’s plant you accidentally left out in the cold. She likes the idea of keeping the office closed during a layoff so people don’t have to experience the dreaded walk of shame.
Privacy FTW! McDonald’s closed its offices before axing some workers in order to allow them the “dignity, confidentiality and comfort” experience of being let go on their terms – snuggled in their own beds, with pet and ice cream on standby.
And just a tip: letting the outgoing employees vent their emotions remotely is definitely better than risking them tearing the office apart like an angry raccoon stuck in a trash can. Twitter was especially concerned about this back in November, so they placed their offices on lockdown and had their employees keep a safe distance from any important Twitter systems and customer information.
Google made headlines in January for sending out a mass email for the biggest group layoff in their history – not their finest moment. Employees woke up to the “Dear Ex-Employee” email, found out about their severance, and were promptly locked out of the building with the swipe of a security badge. Oof.
Things went from bad to worse for digital mortgage lender Better.com. Remember when they laid off 900 people in a Zoom call in 2021? Oh, and don’t forget Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announcing layoffs via Zoom with the chat disabled. Talk about awkward!
But there is a silver lining. When done right, remote layoffs can provide a level of comfort and closure that is often denied within an office environment. As much as it sucks to lose a job, saying goodbye and packing up your desk on your own terms can be better than being escorted to the door.
When companies choose not to have those layoff conversations in person, things can get real ugly, real fast. United Furniture Industries got slammed with a class-action lawsuit after firing over 2,600 employees via email and text messages in the dark of the night. Yikes!
Vanessa Matsis-McCready from Engage PEO suggests that companies should focus on understanding and respecting the culture within the organization when deciding the best way to say “buh-bye”. There’s no one-size-fits-all approach and it’s all about nurturing the company’s soul – or something like that.
Take it from Lauren B. Weinstein, who got laid off last summer during a family pool day. Being alone with your thoughts and a future without coworkers might seem weird at first, but it sure beats being escorted out of the building with a box of your belongings, right? The trick is to make peace with the fact that it feels extremely personal, even if the company insists it’s not.
Layoffs are a bitter pill to swallow, but with the right blend of sensitivity, communication, and the occasional reference to ice cream, they don’t have to break an employee’s spirit entirely.
