Workers may expect certain processes when getting terminated: a specific explanation from their boss, a certain period of time to wrap up any affairs, a chance to ask questions. Part of the reason mass ‘Zoom firings’ feel so egregious, says Hayden Woodley, associate professor of organisational behaviour at Ivey Business School, Western University, Canada, is because they represent “a combination of two bad practices that shouldn't be done in the first place": firing people in groups and without a direct conversation.īoth of those practices can make losing your job – an already devastating experience – even more miserable, because "both are going to be perceived as lacking procedural justice", says Woodley. But experts say cutting jobs and the people who do them can be done more considerately, helping soften the blow for affected workers. Yet virtual layoffs may well become more standard in the remote and hybrid world, because of the new ways we’re working. There’s no one-to-one chat in a side-office, no way to ask questions or process what's happened in the way there is with an individual, in-person conversation. Yet mass ‘Zoom firings’ make headlines to devastated workers, the news can feel like a compassionless blindside. And in the new remote-work world, in which we increasingly use technology to communicate, it makes sense that those who are hired and work virtually might also get fired virtually. Large-scale job cuts have always existed. I haven't been a part of something like that before," one employee told the BBC in December. But overall, these collective, virtual layoffs generated bad publicity and left staff angry.
At Swedish fintech company Klarna, also in May, the CEO announced 700 job cuts in a pre-recorded message, after which workers had to wait up to 48 hours for an email telling them whether they were part of the affected group.Ĭompanies may have had particular reasons for using the processes they did: the pandemic, slowed growth and rising labour costs have forced some firms to downsize, and group calls are an effective way to deliver bad news to large numbers of affected workers. Effective immediately." Six months later, US used-car company Carvana let 2,500 workers go in a similar manner, some during group Zoom calls, some via email. "If you're on this call, you're part of the unlucky group being laid off," CEO Vishal Garg told workers. In December 2021, US mortgage company fired 900 workers over Zoom.
In recent months, there have been several high-profile cases of companies terminating large groups of employees via video calls or other virtual communications.
0 kommentar(er)
