The company where I work has been going through problems and for the past few months people keep being let go. After 4 months of watching an average of 2 people loose their jobs per month, I had the idea to register dayssincelastlayoff.com. My idea was to have a 'X Days Since Last Injury' kind of image on the site that would just show this stat for various companies. My thinking was that knowing how frequently a company was letting go of it's employees might be a good metric to figure out if the management knows what they are doing. And my experience (written below) leads me to believe that a company laying off a small number of employees but doing it frequently is worse than a company that just does one huge round of layoffs.
This is the first time I've been part of a company that's going through a round of layoffs, and I understand that there are business decisions that lead to this. But the way I've seen it happen here is that instead of one massive round of layoffs (which they had as well. Fired around 8 people at the same time when the down sizing started) the management here kept firing 1 or 2 people at a time every month. From a morale perspective, this felt worse than loosing a bunch of people at once. Because this way, everybody keeps thinking if they are next. Has anyone else seen this happen, and did the company survive after this? Because what's happening at my work is that now, everybody has started looking for new jobs, because of the uncertainty.
The layoffs have stopped since the last month, so I lost interest in the idea. But just to throw it out there, could something like this ever be useful? If yes I might do something useful with the domain.
In your opinion what hurts morale more? One big round of layoff, or multiple smaller rounds?
I've only seen the later happen, and personally I think I'd prefer the first one. If you know that after that large layoff round the rest of the company is safe, I'd venture that might be better for the morale of the remaining employees.
The small layoffs are not usually done for morale reasons; they're done to avoid having to give a WARN notice [1].
Even in cases where a WARN notice is not legally required, it is a PR problem to be admitting that you're laying staff off. People gossip, they think your products must not be good, new candidates have second thoughts, etc. But if you're just firing 1-2 people a week, then (you hope) nobody notices and you can keep putting on a happy public face.
"Cut deep and cut once". Multiple rounds of layoffs is going to seed paranoia as well as hurt morale, so it's often better to over-do-it a little than end up with some of your best employees quitting because they're tired of wondering if they're next.
I've seen both in action, and while the large layoff is really nasty, the company can immediately start to look forwards into rebuilding rather than sitting in the "was it enough, who's next?" purgatory.
As an ex-cisco employee I can say with absolute certainty that I will view any large company which "cuts deep and cuts once" with deep suspicion and paranoia, and with bad memories.
> In your opinion what hurts morale more? One big round of layoff, or multiple smaller rounds?
Both hurt morale.
I've seen many rounds of redundancy and layoffs in UK companies and both the huge layoff rounds and the slowly trimming back everywhere.
With the big rounds, the "We'll only do this once so we'll do it big and won't do it again" is never true. The whole company knows it's just time but at least you can prepare.
The axe is on a pendulum and if you give it a lot of momentum and swing from a great height it will swing back in good time and take off another chunk of the company.
With the small rounds of denying there is an issue and trimming a person from each team, it feels like you are being hunted and it's easy to walk around and see that the company isn't doing enough to address whatever the issues are, it's too cautious.
The axe is on a pendulum and if you only swing it a little the cadence is much higher and it will swing often and constantly slice of a little.
The axe is on a pendulum, once it starts swinging it will swing again. It never swings just once.
Companies are too cautious, too much in denial. The first cut is like a surgeon trainee making his first incision: too little, too late. Then comes the bigger cut, but its still not enough. Of course its not enough; by now the executives (who don't know what to do, who caused the mess and should be the first to go) have latched on to layoffs as the panacea to bring back the good times, the fruits of which they enjoyed but never understood. Layoffs can be necessary in a company, but they only work in conjunction with other actions, carefully managed together by leadership with vision and courage. I've watched executives argue over laying off a man that was costing them $5.00 per hour (and cleaning their bathrooms), but ignore everyone around the management meeting table.
The companies may survive, departments may survive. They'll need time to recover, rebuild, find new confidence and morale.
But... in the short-term, once cuts start they don't stop.
It's always too little too late. The big cuts are indicative of how bad things already are, the small cuts are indicative of how bag things are yet to get (but it is coming down the line and aimed at you).
Once the axe starts swinging, be in control of your situation and look elsewhere. Don't wait to let the situation dictate to you.
That's not _necessarily_ true. I've worked at a company that expanded far too fast, and laid off a sizeable number of people. They then got some serious focus on the areas that they could do well, made good money and grew more sustainably. By the time I left they were substantially bigger than they had been, sustainably profitable and had been acquired.
On the other hand, I've also been places where the cuts just kept on coming.
Happened to a friend of mine while he was on his honeymoon. Through a slip by management people knew it was coming. He wanted to know before he left, but they wouldn't tell him. So he ended up checking his voicemail everyday while he was on his final vacation.
I've had it happen too. Granted, it was kind of a bullshit zeroth job where it happened and the company folded a month later, but it still sucked. I almost brought in cupcakes to share with the company...
It requires a certain kind of attitude that only a small minority of all people have to keep morale high in a situation where you can be fired any second without warning instead of going through the office looking like a kid who just shat his diapers.
The company used to lay off groups of people every other Friday or so. A friend lost a job every time. Everyone knew the company was going to shut down and we were just waiting it out. It was during the dot.com bubble burst, so it wasn't like there were millions of new jobs to jump to. I finally got my Friday meeting after something like 6 rounds.
This happened at my prior job which ambush fired me back in February. I noticed that their main investors had started to back out of tech investments in general, and then heard about several rounds of layoffs since then. Friends told me about a morale drop, but they are also friends, and might have been trying to soften the blow.
Anyhow, I like your idea for dayssincelastlayoff.com.
this is often times done on purpose, for companies listed on the nasdaq or nyse, i believe they have to announce publicly if they're laying off x% (i think it's like 7 or 9%). if they're less than x% then they can totally disregard public notification which helps with morale.
This is the first time I've been part of a company that's going through a round of layoffs, and I understand that there are business decisions that lead to this. But the way I've seen it happen here is that instead of one massive round of layoffs (which they had as well. Fired around 8 people at the same time when the down sizing started) the management here kept firing 1 or 2 people at a time every month. From a morale perspective, this felt worse than loosing a bunch of people at once. Because this way, everybody keeps thinking if they are next. Has anyone else seen this happen, and did the company survive after this? Because what's happening at my work is that now, everybody has started looking for new jobs, because of the uncertainty.
The layoffs have stopped since the last month, so I lost interest in the idea. But just to throw it out there, could something like this ever be useful? If yes I might do something useful with the domain.