How to make layoffs less awful
Principles for being involved in disruptive and difficult change
One of the questions I got after writing my opinion on the cultural and leadership failure that is the layoff process at Google was to ask me what I would have done differently. I’m going to reiterate this now before I start because it’s important — there is no good way to do this process. For someone in a leadership position all you can do is try and chart a path to make it as not terrible as possible. There are, however, really bad ways to approach this and while it is impossible to make it good or even fair you can strive for humane. A good life rule to follow might be that anytime your thought process resembles some version of “What would Elon Musk do?” then you might want to have a word with yourself.
I can also state up front that I have not been involved, even peripherally, in what HR professionals call a “Reduction in Force” in the US. I do have experience in driving and being involved with disruptive change. The set of principles don’t change. If you want to know more about how this works in the US then it’s worth reading some best practices. Outside of the US there are a very different set of legal requirements — I expect that those affected in those regions to have better long term outcomes.
