It is 2017, I’m looking out my corporate office window and I see a taxi cab pull up outside our office building. Now, I’m paying close attention to this taxi cab because we don’t see a lot of them in Orange County, California, but out pops our head of HR from our corporate offices in Florida, and my senior VP from Chicago.
Unfortunately, they were there to deliver the news that many of the positions in our office were being eliminated – but they flew cross country to deliver that information, that bad news, in person. Well jump ahead to 2020, and another company I’m affiliated with, they sent out an email to roughly 2,000 employees asking them to dial in to a telephone number at a particular day and time – which is where those employees learned that they were being laid off, via a mass telephone call.
Here we are today, and the latest and greatest has hit us, that there are mass layoffs being done via email. Yes, you heard me correctly. General Motors is just one of which to hit the news, that they sent out an email laying off employees. Now, they claim that they chose to deliver this news via email so they could control the timing, so that everybody being laid off would receive this information at the exact same time. And one of their main reasons for having these layoffs in general is because they’re really trying to hit the efficiency button.
Well, if I ever saw an example of hitting an efficiency button, they’re demonstrating it right here with how they decided to lay off their employees.
They are choosing efficiency over humanity. If I ever saw a mistake in communication, ding, ding, ding! This is the winner! Laying off employees via a mass email is such an ignorance of the fact that we’re dealing with human beings. Leaders, you are working with human beings day in and day out.
Yes, your responsibility is to drive to an organization’s goals, missions, and revenue, but without human being’s support to do that, there is nowhere to go. These organizations are not only receiving some repercussions in the news, but think about when they need to go back and re-hire. How are these companies being seen, even if it’s not those employees being laid off that are coming back, but just employees in general?
And then what’s it doing to the morale of the current employees? How are they feeling knowing, hey, at any moment I might get this email telling me I’m laid off, or do I really want to be a part of a leadership that treats their employees like this? What’s the risk of losing that top talent right now?
I’m challenging every single one of you, whether you are a formal leader or not, that we need to be choosing our communication strategy wisely, and choosing humanity over efficiency. We are working with human beings. It is important to continue to have that open communication, and that’s what we do here. That’s why I’m here, is to help you transform that intention into a true outcome!