We’re almost at corporate silly season, where employers believe that December is a great time (for whatever macabre reason) to make people redundant.
Redundancies - unfortunately - are a natural part of a business. It happened to me in the early 2000s, so I know how it feels.
Almost every week there’s a story of another organisation making people redundant. Whether you agree with them of course, is neither here nor there and it’s easy to forget - when leaders are trying to balance spreadsheets - that livelihoods and people’s sense of worth are at stake and can be irrevocably ruined by what’s about to unfold.
The people who leave are only half of it. The real audience is the people who remain in place, and they are reading every gesture for what you think a colleague is worth. Not only that, but the world is watching too for every misstep that you may make.
In March 2022, P&O Ferries offered a masterclass in how not to make people redundant. It sacked 786 seafarers by pre-recorded video message, then sent security guards aboard to walk them off the ships. The chief executive later told the UK Parliament that the company had chosen not to consult anyone, because it knew the unions would object. Not great.
So, in the spirit of learning from the worst-case scenarios here is how not to make people redundant.
1.Leak it first. Let the news arrive as a rumour, so people can spend a fortnight reading trade press about their own futures before anyone officially says a word.
2.Announce it in bulk. A town hall, or a group email titled ‘Organisational update’, as though you were reporting a change to your car parking policy. Nothing says ‘you were never really an individual to us’ like finding out alongside four hundred colleagues.
3.Outsource the empathy. Bring in an external company or a HR business partner the person has never met to deliver the news their own manager was too uncomfortable (or maybe just not trusted enough) to give.
4.Escort them out. Repay a decade of loyalty with a confiscated lanyard and a walk to the door, in full view of everyone who used to trust you.
5.Say nothing to those who remain. Deliver the news and vanish, leaving the silence to be filled with fear and invention.
That last one is the expensive one. Harvard’s Sandra Sucher, who has studied layoffs for fifteen years, finds that the savings companies imagine rarely turn up (*cough* AI boomerang *cough*).
What turns up instead is lost knowledge, weaker engagement, higher turnover and a workforce that has learned to stop taking risks.
So if it has to be done, then give people proper notice and an honest account of why. Do it face to face. Then stay in the room afterwards, rather than delivering the news and disappearing, because the people watching are deciding whether you are worth staying for.
They will remember how it felt. They always do.
