Probably the most difficult a part of layoff communications, past the human and emotional toll, is controlling the narrative: telling the correct story to workers who’re leaving, to those that are staying, to shareholders and traders, to most people.
However more and more, different events – typically those that have been laid off – are sharing their aspect of the story. When unaddressed, these incidents may cause critical hurt to worker morale, employer branding and common market sentiment.
Whether or not former workers are leaking layoff communications to the press, recording their very own terminations, sharing tales on social media or banding collectively and responding as a union, these actions can create new wrinkles. Navigating these conditions requires a powerful partnership between each inside and exterior communicators earlier than, throughout and after layoffs to mitigate harm and reply with empathy.
Listed below are some frequent eventualities that may happen when particular person employees start to grow to be the story within the wake of a layoff, plus how you can reply – and even stop these eventualities solely.
Leaks
Leaks are essentially the most acquainted of those challenges to many communicators. It’s so simple as a present or former worker hitting “ahead” on an e-mail message, screenshotting an intranet submit, or recording a city corridor and passing it alongside to a sympathetic reporter.
In a matter of moments, each phrase you so rigorously workshopped with management can now be dissected or taken out of context.
However in lots of circumstances, this isn’t a catastrophe. Journalists who get their arms on these memos typically use them to tell their reporting on the layoffs, utilizing easy excerpts as an instance the whys and hows for his or her audiences, as in this Wall Avenue Journal piece on layoffs.
A well-crafted layoff memo or e-mail is value “leaking” your self. Whether or not meaning proactively sending it to a trusted reporter or posting it in your web site, as eBay did right here, these communications may also help inform your story clearly. If it helps your workers perceive higher, likelihood is it’ll assist all audiences achieve this.
The problem arises when the leaked communications aren’t put collectively properly. Once they don’t respect the inherent humanity of the individuals dropping their jobs. Once they make the CEO holding the ax appear to be a sufferer.
We’ve seen this occur time and time once more. In 2023, the CEO of PagerDuty quoted Martin Luther King on the measure of chief in the identical e-mail the place she introduced a 7% discount in power. In 2021, a video of the CEO of Higher.com shedding 900 workers through Zoom and as soon as once more making himself the principle character (“That is the second time in my profession I’m doing this and I don’t wish to do that. The final time I did it, I cried,” CEO Vishal Garg mentioned on the decision).
The underside line: Craft all layoff communications, together with speeches, with the expectation that they are going to leak. In case you wouldn’t be ok with the announcement memo showing on the entrance web page of the New York Occasions, don’t ship it to your workers. Contemplate crafting the paperwork in such a method that they will serve exterior audiences in addition to inside stakeholders. Carry collectively your inside and exterior groups to elucidate the state of affairs with compassion – but in addition a eager understanding of the enterprise and its implications. In case you share your communications first, you’ll have the chance to border them in the very best mild.
Individuals sharing private tales
A Wayfair worker was about to go to a chemotherapy appointment to deal with her stage 4 metastatic breast most cancers when she bought phrase that she had been laid off. She was on medical depart on the time however was terminated all the identical, as she detailed in a LinkedIn submit.
(Sure, it’s authorized to put somebody off whereas on depart, whether or not medical or parental, so long as the depart will not be the explanation they’re laid off.)
That may have been a private tragedy, however a collection of communications missteps compounded the worry, stress and anxiousness that an individual present process chemotherapy needed to endure, together with lengthy pauses earlier than further info was shared on the severance bundle and different particulars.
“To say this raised my anxiousness can be an understatement,” Andrena M. wrote on LinkedIn. “I child you not my blood stress which is all the time regular, regardless of stage 4, was the best I can recall and my resting coronary heart fee the best on report.”
Wayfair, after all, had its share of dangerous press for the way it dealt with worker communications normally and layoffs particularly, as our colleague Sean Devlin explains on Ragan.com.
The underside line: There is no such thing as a solution to make a layoff stress-free, however this stage of ready and anxiousness is pointless. Set up the cadence of how info will probably be rolled out to terminated workers in order that it comes rapidly, answering questions proactively with out leaving them questioning. Errors can occur and delays may happen, however do your finest to get info into their arms as rapidly as you possibly can to allow them to go about their lives and plan their subsequent strikes.
And – this can be a bigger dialog available at the side of HR – think about whether or not it’s attainable to let individuals end their depart earlier than they’re formally terminated.
As NPR notes, “Nonetheless, some employers do wait till the tip of somebody’s depart to implement a layoff. In some circumstances, they wish to give that particular person additional time to get again on their ft. Different occasions, it’s to keep away from any probability of a pricey authorized struggle.”
For extra info on how you can entry the total story and grow to be a member of Ragan’s Communications Management Council, attain out right here.
Allison Carter is editor-in-chief of PR Every day. Comply with her on Twitter or LinkedIn.
COMMENT
One Response to “3 methods to forestall ex-employees from seizing management of your layoff narrative”
Years in the past, I used to be the media spokesperson when my firm closed a website in a small group. A neighborhood reporter was going round attempting to get workers to talk, so I went to the positioning chief and requested for 4 workers prepared to share their views truthfully and thoughtfully. I met with them and mentioned I wasn’t giving them speaking factors. I informed them what I’d been saying, after which I added, “You don’t want to recollect any of that. As an alternative, I invite you to say what’s in your coronary heart. Share what you understand and what you’re feeling, as a lot as you’re feeling comfy.” Then I invited the reporter to come back in to interview them whereas I gave them some area (although clearly nonetheless within the room). What ensued was an correct, frank and grounded interview. The staff brazenly shared their fears, disappointment and uncertainties, often with tears. On the similar time, they mentioned they understood the enterprise causes and had been grateful for the way in which the corporate was supporting them (letting them know early on, providing severance, job search, and so forth.). The reporter was stunned after they assured him I hadn’t informed them what to say. The consequence was an excellent page-1 story that helped the group perceive and are available to grips with the choice, confirmed how the corporate was serving to these affected, and portrayed the corporate as each caring and clear. Dangerous? Sure, massively so. However it was the correct factor to do, and firms ought to do it extra. Layoffs and website closures aren’t only a bottom-line choice; they impression individuals’s lives and complete communities. If firms are going to make selections like this, they first have to have compassion for these affected — not simply in phrase, but in addition in supportive deed — and second, they should have the braveness to acknowledge the negatives in a significant, genuine method. When compassion, transparency and authenticity are the guiding ideas, leaks grow to be far much less worrisome.