On Layoffs…..

I read an important article by Elizabeth Spiers, Layoffs by Email Show What Employers Really Think of Their Workers. Please take the time to read it, it’s more important than this post.

In the past year, we’ve seen 100’s of thousands of layoffs, particularly in technology segments. As Ms. Spiers outlines, as tragic as these are, the dehumanizing means by which too many of those people have been notified of their terminations tells us more about the absence of caring and respect senior leaders have of their people.

For years, I’ve been writing about the mechanization of selling. Customers have become depersonalized widgets that we move along our selling assembly lines. Our people have become replaceable widgets as well. We use them as long as they are useful, replacing them when we shift our strategies or directions, or with someone who costs less than them.

We demand the highest levels of performance, focus, work from these people. WFH was a strategy to deal with Covid, has now been adopted as a method to increase the time available for work. Now, we can leverage those wasted commute hours, now we can schedule meetings at any time of the day.

We don’t seem to recognize that while people are working longer hours, productivity is declining. We ignore the research that talks about the criticality of F2F interaction, both social and team/work interaction. We ignore the data that shows creative work (and knowledge work is creative work), demands interactivity–not screen time.

And for many of those workplaces where office work is required, we do things that maximize the hours they are chained to their workspaces. We provide buses equipped with WiFi so they can be productive on the commute. We provide facilities on our campuses to minimize the time spent away from the office. We bring in lunches, not so much as a perk, but to minimize the time people spend getting their lunch and enabling them to eat at their workstations.

We expect the highest levels of loyalty from our people. We are disappointed by their lack of loyalty when they leave for a different, perhaps higher paying jobs. Yet we display no loyalty to them.

Layoffs are, sometimes, inevitable. We must do them to survive and to provide jobs for the remaining people in the company. But layoffs are always the result of management error. Whether it is a failure in a certain business error, a failure of a strategy, a failure of organizational execution, or the unrealistic adoption of unsustainable business models, as we’ve seen in much of the SaaS world.

Yet management, too often, doesn’t suffer from these failures, keeping their jobs, perhaps their bonuses. The people impacted are those that trusted management and do the work management directed.

I’ve personally been involved and led two relatively massive layoffs. I’ve had to advise clients on layoffs (after all other alternatives have been exhausted). Each of these were, unfortunately, necessary. But they are heartbreaking. You sit in front of people who are losing their jobs. People who were doing the best of what we were asking them to do. People who committed to the successful execution of the strategies and programs we initiated. People, who are not at fault for the bad decisions that have been made.

One of the things I learned in these reductions (we tend to adopt language that makes us avoid using unpleasant words like layoff/termination) is that we are not only impacting those individuals, we are impacting their families. There are spouses, partners, children, parents and others that are depending on the individuals we are terminating.

Layoffs are deeply personal to those that are being impacted. And to adopt the practices that we are seeing too many organizations adopt out of “efficiency,” is tragic. It demonstrates the lack of courage and respect on the part of leadership. That managers don’t have the time to do this F2F, that they don’t have the time to listen to the feedback of the impacted employees, even if it may be anger, is simply cowardice.

If we are to be true leaders, we cannot not have the time to make sure every impacted person has the opportunity to sit down with management to discuss what has happened to their jobs. We are obligated to learn from them, their perspectives, their concerns, their questions and even their anger. We owe them, ourselves, the remaining people, and our companies nothing less.

And this is not just about layoffs. We see the increasing “dehumanization” of work and how we value people. Research report after research report show plummeting engagement and satisfaction. Voluntary turnover at levels that have been unheard of is accepted as common place.

And what we fail to recognize is that this “soft” stuff isn’t just nice, but it’s what drives business performance.

My very good friend, Mitch Little, writes about this often. Mitch has led some of the highest performing organizations I have seen. But his mantra is summarized by the acronym: CUSP

• Caring
• Understanding
• Serving
• Purpose

These principles are at the core of any high performing organization. They are foundational to our ability to transform, innovate, and grow.

Sadly, we seem to be losing site of these.