People-centricity when managing redundancies

I can’t stop thinking about the 1000+ Intuit employees laid off last week.
In an open letter under the heading ‘Taking Care of our People’ the CEO say’s this:
“We’ve significantly raised the bar on our expectations of employee performance, resulting in approximately 1,050 employees leaving the company who are not meeting expectations and who we believe will be more successful outside of Intuit.”

Even if that is the case I cannot understand how publicly labelling people you have just laid off as ‘under-performers’ benefits anyone.  Certainly not the colleagues who will find it hard enough to find another job in an already tough market.  Or the colleagues left behind wondering if that’s how they’ll be treated if they don’t meet expectations in 12 months’ time.

Many years ago, I was asked to lead the communication for a redundancy programme that would affect some of my closest colleagues. Bound by a strict NDA, it was quite stressful listening to coworkers discussing their future plans—weddings, house moves, holidays—while knowing what was about to be announced. I managed that communication with great care, planning every detail of the announcement as if I were one of the impacted colleagues.   I also wanted colleagues who were staying to approve of the way their colleagues were treated when leaving the business.   It made all the difference to the colleague experience.

I often share this story in presentations about change. It’s where I first experienced managing change in a people-centric way and it’s been the template for how I’ve managed redundancy programmes ever since.

Laying people off is never easy, but the very least we can do is remind ourselves of the values we espouse and allow people to exit with compassion, dignity and respect.