Last week, McDonald’s asked its employees, who usually work in the office at least three days a week, to work from home. According to information obtained by The New York Times, the plan included laying off hundreds of employees, and the company preferred to distribute its information virtually.
McDonald’s isn’t the only company to have changed the rules of the game when it comes to layoffs. In January, Google fired thousands of people over email. Last month, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced major layoff plans for the coming year in a 2,000-word memo, explaining that Meta staff “wanted more transparency earlier in restructuring plans.” .
Like many labor standards, the way to fire is being rewritten in the wake of the pandemic, when companies that were downsizing often had no choice but to make layoffs through Slack, Zoom or email – and they often did it in a sloppy way. With the reopening of offices and the generalization of remote work, companies now have a choice, and it is not necessarily obvious what is best for workers.
“If we had had this conversation three years ago, I would have said it was cruel and unusual punishment,” Bob Sutton, a Stanford professor and author of The No Asshole Rule, said of remote dismissal.
Cynthia Huang, a marketing manager, was fired from a consumer goods company with a hybrid work policy in February. As she was working remotely that day, she learned the news via video call; other colleagues were fired in the office.
Ms. Huang said she preferred to receive the call at home.
According to Sutton, firing at home can sometimes be more compassionate in the age of hybrid working. “If you’re calling people who don’t come in often to the office to fire them, that’s kind of weird,” he said.
When layoffs are done remotely, managers may not fully feel the human cost of their decisions, Sutton pointed out: It’s “a little bit easy to come and go.” And with in-person notice, workers have the opportunity to say goodbye to their co-workers.
Kim Scott, a former Google executive and author of the Radical Candor website, suggested that awkwardness or embarrassment could be avoided with proper planning – for example, providing an extra conference room so people can pull themselves together and by offering the possibility of recovering personal belongings after working hours.
Support is important. A video call with your manager is better than an impersonal email.
Experts question the wisdom of Mr. Zuckerberg’s announcement ahead of the layoffs.
“You have to be prepared to talk to people about both the process you’re going to go through and what people will be offered if it turns out their jobs are in jeopardy,” says Sandra Sucher, a professor at Harvard Business School. . “Because if you don’t do all of this at the same time, you introduce a ton of uncertainty into your organization. »
Ms. Scott advises respecting a very short period between the announcement and the execution of redundancies. “It makes everyone nervous,” she says of Mark Zuckerberg’s approach.
But even the most considered version of the dismissal remains painful. “I felt like there was no human contact,” Ms. Huang said of her experience. But I don’t think that’s necessarily because it was a virtual meeting rather than in person. I think it’s just the nature of a dismissal. »