It's sort of ripping off a band-aid: it's better to have it done all at once, than dragging it out over the course of a few weeks.
- Deliver your message with empathy and context as to why the decision has to be made for the survival of the company.
- Deliver the message in a way that scales. There's almost no point in having a webinar if there's not going to be a discussion anyway.
- Offer assistance to those being laid off to lessen the blow: paid leave, coaching, extended health benefits etc.
- Preface your message with the good stuff (point above) and explain why the company has taken any type of measure to lessen the impact of this sad but unavoidable news.
- Set up a way for ex-employees to keep in touch instead of locking them out completely. Protecting corporate assets is understandable, treating people like disposable trash is not.
Clearly the people in charge don't care about the employees. When they're just using the employees to make them money, IMO, it is worse to lie and pretend otherwise.
I'm not saying that they should lie about caring, having empathy for someone costs nothing and doesn't require you to solve their problems.
Occam's ghost is whispering "sociopath" to me.
Let employees have a way to contact each other for a while, so they can network for their next job, or at least say goodbye.
The rest of the things you're describing all cost money. Why spend money when you don't have to?
Your post is getting downvoted because it displays a tremendous lack of empathy, and because the company in question displayed a tremendous lack of professionalism.
> It's sort of ripping off a band-aid: it's better to have it done all at once, than dragging it out over the course of a few weeks.
It could have been done in a week, and in a way that 1) maintained security/access in a reasonable way, and 2) that allowed people to get their shit in order.
Back-of-the-envelope calculation: It takes a week to lay them off. During this week, productivity will be down 50%. You have 654 employees (ex-post). Say they each cost $200k/year (taxes, office space, etc), that gives (1/52) * 0.5 * 200k = $1.92k/employee in lost productivity, or almost $1.3 million in total.
That’s not how people work.
What are the future losses from not being able to hire top candidates (and maybe even loss of business if customers start boycotting it), since obviously Bird is a shitshow of an employer?
Customers don't stop using Facebook over the clear and present erosion of their freedom it presents, so thinking they would be concerned with how a company treats its employees is absurd.
As for prospective employees, it's going to be a buyer's market from here on out. Universities have been pumping out CS grads en masse, and the startups have been hiring them. With the startups going bankrupt, there will be a glut of unemployed programmers.