Here’s a leaderboard nobody’s happy to be on: the companies laying off the most workers.
Lesson summary
Hi there, I’m Jeff and this is Plain English, where we use current events and trending topics to help you increase your skills in English. JR is the producer and he has uploaded the full content of today’s lesson to PlainEnglish.com/547.
Coming up today:
Google, 12,000 employees. Microsoft, 10,000 workers. Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, 11,000. Amazon, 18,000. Salesforce, about 8,000. These are big, stable, well-known companies laying off massive numbers of staff.
Even smaller, high-growth companies are doing it. Stripe, the payments processor, laid off 1,100 workers—about 14 percent of its workforce. Spotify, a smaller company, laid off 500 workers. SAP, Netflix, Vimeo, Twitter, IBM: they’re all doing it.
If you don’t count the pandemic, this is the first big wave of corporate layoffs in a long time. So how are companies—and individuals—handling it? That’s on today’s lesson.
The expression we’ll talk about today is “bulk up.” And—speaking of JR—we also have a song of the week for you.
Layoffs: No fun on either side of the table
Layoffs are no fun for employees—and they’re no fun for companies either. Start with companies. A company will lay off workers when it doesn’t have enough work for those employees to do. This could happen for a few reasons. Many companies in the technology industry bulked up during the pandemic, expecting demand for their products to continue to increase. But after the pandemic-fueled demand started to slow, there wasn’t enough money to justify so many workers. That’s the big story at Amazon, for example.
A company might also lay off workers if there are a lot of people working, but the work they’re doing is not necessary or if the projects they’re working on have been cancelled. When profits are high, it’s easier to justify a higher headcount. But when profits are squeezed, people doing non-essential jobs are at risk. And when companies don’t need to hire many new workers, then recruiters are often let go, too.
A company has to lay off workers carefully. The first decision is about the numbers: how many jobs should be cut? This is a balancing act . Cut too many workers, and the business can lose valuable people, and it can hurt the company more than it can help. But there’s a risk in cutting too few. If you cut too few workers, then you might have to go back and cut workers in a second round of layoffs. That can be demoralizing for the staff who are left. You don’t want the people who are left to worry about their own jobs in the future. So the best answer for companies is, cut enough the first time.
How, exactly, should this be done? I survived multiple rounds of layoffs during the financial crisis in 2009. My company was typical at the time: layoffs happened on a Friday afternoon. Bosses would call people into their offices, close the door, give them the news with a representative from human resources present. That would be the worker’s last day.
Fridays were nerve-wracking for that reason. We never knew how many, or who, would lose their jobs. The idea was, make the cut on a Friday. Everyone goes home for two days, and the office opens on Monday with fewer people in it.
Employers are re-thinking that. Now, they’re making the announcements mid-week. This lets laid-off employees ask questions of their supervisor and human resources in the next couple of days, rather than having to wait a whole weekend to get their questions answered. Companies are also trying to be more upfront, telling employees about plans and trying to be as transparent as possible. This is a change from the more secretive approach of the past.
What about remote workers? It seems cold to lay off a worker on Zoom. In fact , early in the pandemic, a company called Better.com gathered 900 people on one Zoom call and fired them all in one fell swoop. This is not the recommended approach. Better.com did not live up to its name in this case!
But is it truly better to call people into the office, just to tell them they’re out of a job? That almost seems more heartless. Companies today are conducting layoffs in one-to-one Zoom calls. A lot of employees seem to prefer it. After the call, they can process the news at home, rather than in the middle of an office with everyone else looking on.
So how is it for employees? It’s a shock, it’s embarrassing, and it can be financially perilous, depending on the person’s savings, expenses, and dependents.
In the moments after receiving the news, there are a few key things people can do to make the best of a bad situation. The first is to negotiate a severance package, if that’s available. Every country is different, but companies are often not required to give severance. But as an employee , you should know the law in your country or state, and make sure the employer respects it. You can also try to get the biggest severance or an extension of benefits, if that’s appropriate.
The next thing to do—and this is hard because it can feel embarrassing—but the next thing to do is to tell as many people as you can. I’ve never been laid off, but I think this would be the hardest thing for me. After a layoff, people feel embarrassed—like they weren’t worth it, like they didn’t make it, like they failed. And the last thing they want to do is announce that to the world. But that is the best thing.
Get right back out there. Tell people in your network that you’re available and looking for new work (assuming you are). Especially in times where there are lots of layoffs, other employers won’t look at a laid-off worker like a failure. The smart companies will consider it an opportunity. One company’s loss can be another company’s gain.
And the final tip is not to over-react and not to burn bridges . You’ll feel terrible in the moment, but that’s not the time to ruin relationships with the company, badmouth the company to customers, or steal data. That would only make a bad situation much, much worse.
Survivor’s guilt
One thing people often overlook is the dynamic between the workers who are laid off and the ones who aren’t. This was the hardest thing for me, back in 2009, when I kept my job, but time after time I saw colleagues get laid off.
It’s hard: people are friends at work. So what do you do if you survive—if you keep your job—but a close work friend loses his or hers?
You can ask how they’re doing. You can say you’re sorry. You can express kindness, compassion and friendship. It’s not unlike what you might say after someone has died. You don’t want to be falsely positive, saying things like, “Everything will be fine, you’ll see.” But you can say, “I’m here to listen.”
Great stories make learning English fun
