234: Sorry, Not Sorry: Exploring How CEOs Apologize During Employee Layoffs

When employees are laid off from big tech companies, who do they tell first? They tell everyone all at once. Okay y', all, here's the email. I got laid off at Meta. I'm looking at the email right now. You've recently heard that the hiring freeze will be extended until the end of H1 as the necessary decision to lay off a large part of the demand delivery team. Unfortunately, you've been included in this layoff. Foreign welcome to the Indestructible PR Podcast, where we use current events and tested media and PR strategies to help prevent or manage a crisis and build an indestructible reputation. In this episode, the Language of Layoffs Layoffs were big news in 2022, and that's looking to continue in 2023. Major companies are laying off their employees from Amazon Force. Recently, Meta announced they would be cutting around 10,000 jobs. That's roughly 10% of its workforce. And this was in response to what CEO Mark Zuckerberg described as challenging market conditions. So let's discuss the use of language by these CEOs in the statements they crafted to announce these layoffs. Layoffs can be difficult and an emotional time for both the employees who are affected and the company's leadership. However, the language used by CEOs in these statements can make a significant difference in how the layoff is perceived by the public and the impacted employees. One of the most crucial elements of these statements is the use of language that demonstrates empathy and understanding for those who are being let go. The messaging that CEOs are using should avoid terms that may be perceived as callous or uncaring. For example, instead of using terms like redundancies or cutbacks, it might be more appropriate to use the term layoff or staff reductions. But is there any methodology to what should be used? The reason why I picked this episode this week is because recently, as I was working late in the day, I received a notification on my computer that the Washington Post had just released a story and I noted it was odd, just because I don't get a lot of late afternoon notifications about stories that were posted, but this one caught my eye. Not just for the time that it was released, but the title Deeply Truly Very Sorry. How tech CEOs talk when they Lay Off Workers. Now this was a Molly story, if there ever was one. I mean, first, when you see Deeply Truly Very Sorry, that immediately made me think of the song. Now I can't think of Truly Madly Deeply. I think that it is Savage Garden. I would use it right now, but I can't copyright and all. The article was written by Hamza She Chabin, Luis Melgar, and Leslie Shapiro. What they did in the story is they looked at 48 statements crafted by companies ranging from the massive Microsoft to small scale startups, and they were looking for insights into how tech leaders spin their narrative and justify their decision. So whether the statement is 200 words or 2000, they found that these memos bear remarkable similarities. What they noted is that many of these statements point blame inward but also outward. For instance, that would be alluding to pressures of larger economic forces, in some cases still talking about the pandemic. They also urge positive outlooks despite momentary bouts of gloom. What they found for this research, which I thought was interesting, that rarely did any one of these tech CEOs at least use the word layoff. A surprising number of them addressed their employees by special names, pet names. So in a lot of this messaging that you'll see, it is written in a way to evoke more of a family, more of a tight knit community of people. When I read that part of the story, I immediately thought of Southwest Airlines during Winter Storm Elliott In December of 2022, when there were massive delays and cancellations and nobody got their bags on time. No one got to where they needed to go on time. It was a huge news story and a massive black eye for Southwest. Of the things I remembered is that they called their employees at the beginning of the stories family. But then in social media, when you would read all of these posts, passengers and employees would use the word family, but in a much different way. But in this article, they did notice that this corporate pet name was used a lot to connect with these employees, the ones that they were going to heartlessly let go. So they noted names like Googlers and Vimians and, I don't know, a Vimeon. Is that for Vimeo employees? I'm not sure. I would assume so. But they found pet names like that. And so when layoffs happened, they used some of these names. Those were the messages where they were reaching out to current employees, the ones who survived these layoffs, to offer support to these colleagues that were going to be let go. There was a lot of language around compassion and love and peace and love. Peace and love. I can't. No, that's not true. That wasn't in the story. But I can't hear compassion and love without hearing Ringo Starr on our star Peace and love. Peace and love. So when Salesforce, when they had laid off a significant amount of people from their company, that was Their type of language, they were using a lot of compassionate language in half of the statements that they analyzed. A number of these tech leaders admitted in their statements that they hired too many people to quickly, and they noted it was in response to this explosive demand for digital services, E commerce. You know, at the time, so many of these companies just onboarded all these new employees. And between 2020 and 2021, Amazon's headcount grew by 310,000 thousand, which was nearly 25% of the employees, and Meta grew by roughly the same percentage. Now, I can follow this a little bit more. I don't work obviously, in high tech. I follow it. But I have a close group of friends. We have a text chat, and whenever there's a Meta layoff coming, one of our friends in the tech check who works at Meta, we have to go through it, you know, with her, and we feel it with her because there's a lot of stress there. And she has survived all of these layoffs and. But a lot of her staff did not. And so whenever I hear in this text chat that it's coming, I always look for Mark Zuckerberg's language. You know, earlier, when he announced the layoffs, the first round of layoffs he did by video, there was a lot of news stories, a lot of scrutiny there. But then this last round that he did was mostly by email, which is what I played in the TikTok at the beginning of the episode. But over this past year, in early 2023, the tech industry has come back down to earth, so to speak. Many of these tech leaders acknowledged that they overestimated the durability of this pandemic surge that happened in that industry. There are a lot of people, a lot of businesses and sectors out there that dealt with a lot of uncertainty during the pandemic. But in tech, they made a lot of mistakes there, and a lot of people are now scrambling without jobs. So in many of these statements, the CEOs did use context to explain what was happening. Nearly two thirds of these memos that they analyzed mentioned a greater need for greater efficiency. Now, for some, that might be fine. It may look like they're, you know, blaming the system. They quoted Sandra Shuker, a Harvard Business School professor who studies layoffs. So, you know that this is going to to be a good study. But she had said that statements like that come off as victim blaming. When you blame the efficiency, it doesn't sound like you're blaming yourself and management for the infrastructure they created. It sounds like you're blaming the performance of the employees within the company. So the company, if they're actually doing restructuring, they need to say they were fixing the efficiency problem. The efficiency problems were on the company, not on the people. They also noted that a number of business executives did not always feel the need to apologize for these layoffs. More than half of the memos do recognize some type of an apology, which is much different than layoff memos of the past. More company leaders, just more people in the public eye in general. I notice as someone who analyzes apologies, I notice they come out a lot more now. It's easier to come out because people are figuring out the secret sauce is showing this vulnerability. Taking the blame for something actually makes you get through the issue quicker. So nowadays this article is noting that there's less ego in the C suite. You know, people are not as interested in working for ego led leaders, especially ones who do not take accountability or don't say sorry. Look at Elon Musk. And when we think about leaders, robotic leaders or leaders who lack compassion, who actually enjoy torturing employees, I mean, that is Elon Musk and Twitter. And the jury is still out on how Twitter is going to fare. I mean, in the next couple weeks. Apparently it was supposed to be on April Fool's Day a couple days ago, so I'm recording this before April Fool's Day that Elon Musk was going to wipe away the verification system. You know, the blue check. We shall see what happens there. He's driving people. I mean, Elon Musk needs cash. He's driving people to buy the verification. I bought it as a tester. I was going to do a podcast episode about it, but I don't want to because I am not into Twitter at all. I mean, I still love it and I love the people and I love the concept of it. I mean, that's where you're going to get your quick news hit. But there's just something about how it's led and how the employees are treated that I don't have the same excitement for the app that I once had. And it will be interesting when this next round when he tries with the blue verification, doing away with it with a lot of journalists and notable people that everyone's now going to have to buy it and pay for verificationals. It will be interesting to see how many people actually do that and almost guarantee that Elon Musk will not apologize for anything. But they had noted that 27 out of the 48 layoff memos included some type of an apology or Taking responsibility. So the takeaway from the Washington Post article, as they looked at specifically the tech industry and tech CEOs, we can in a way separate it because it is a different type of sector where you're going to see a lot of inboarding. You're going to see a lot of employees there that are just hired, just they're coming in the door. They don't necessarily know the jobs that they have. But there isn't much thought as to what these actual people are going to do. They just know that they need humans and human resources to make the resource of the company run. So I think that's why we hear about these massive layoffs in the news, is when the bubble bursts, they're going to onboard the thousands of people at once and then they're going to remove them at once. But it doesn't mean that layoffs don't happen everywhere. They just don't make news and we don't hear about it. But certainly many of us know people who have been laid off recently. So let's say you're listening right now. You might be a leader, you might be a CEO, you might work for a company. You have to write the statement for the CEO when there is a layoff or people are let go, or there's something, you know, that happens at the company that you need to address. The most important part of these types of statements nowadays, regardless of the sector, is that CEOs should take care to avoid blaming any employee for the fault of why the company needs to have layoffs or having people lose their jobs. If there are financial difficulties within a company, you need to own up that it's financial and why do not blame employees. It will just wreck your culture. Instead, you should focus on the broader economic factors that have led to the layoffs. This type of approach demonstrates that leadership is taking responsibility for the decision to lay off the employees. I wrote a statement earlier this year for changes in a company and that is what I did. I researched this particular market and talked about the economy and people understand, you know, that people are being laid off. So there is a lot of these kind of ruptures at these companies. Another important aspect to these statements, and it's something I've been talking about really my entire career, and that's transparency. The more information a CEO can provide in these statements for the reasons for the layoffs and what steps the company is taking to mitigate the impact on employees, the better off it's going to be. That falls into my framework. Own it, explain it. Promise it then you can tell people what is happening even if they've lost their job. So you can give them information about severance packages, job placement services, or any other resource that's available to employees as they transition. Even though the news isn't good news, you can still promise something to get people through it. And lastly, it is important for CEOs to communicate a sense of hope and optimism for the future of the company. There are still people at that company who are scared, and I know this just from knowing people who are going through these massive layoffs. So this could include discussing plans for growth and expansion when the time is right, and also acknowledging the valuable contribution of the employees who are being let go. So, in summary, the language used by CEOs in these statements to announce layoffs or dramatic shifts in the company can have significant impacts on how these events are perceived by the public and the employees, both the impacted employees who were let go and those who remain. So it's important that CEOs take care to use language that demonstrates this empathy, this compassion and understanding. Do not blame your employees. Do not blame any person who is there working on behalf of the company for the problems with the company, because they're looking to the CEO. If something is failing, it's the fault of the CEO. And if that message does not relay that, if that message points blame to the employee, you can almost expect that you will hear about this statement outside of your circle of employees. You will surely find it on social media. Now, in every episode, I'd leave you with one easy to remember takeaway to help you build an indestructible reputation. And here it is. The most basic requirement for any layoff announcement is showing humanity. Show humility. Don't do anything that adds to the harm, the fear, the anger. Apologize if you can. Take ownership and accountability for what happened. Because failure to apologize or take accountability for what happened to these employees can create anxious survivors as well as wounded victims. And these victims, as I talk about a lot on this podcast, when there is a victim, they are never silent. They take that injustice, they take that grievance somewhere else, and it's either to a person who will put it on social media or they themselves will do that. Remember that people are paying attention when these big moves happen at companies. That's all for this week on the podcast. Bye for now.