sirdoriusFace the consequences - Work Chronicles
The real joke is the ceo admitting fault. You can always blame “the market”, “inflation” and “lackluster employee performance”!
joelfromausOr the new one: “rightsizing”
If I hear the word rightsizing come out of my boss’ mouth, that mouth is immediately losing a few teeth. I would legitimately prefer the boss in this comic, because at least they’re honest.
theneverfoxI genuinely respect when people own up to their mistakes.
I’d greatly prefer a boss who says “look, this isn’t your fault, I wish I could do better by you, but it was my job to protect your job and this is where we are. Absolutely use me as a reference, reach out to me if I can do anything to help you land on your feet”
People really hate when something unfair happens and you try to pin it on them… But when you put down the titles, explain why it’s come to this, and offer to help them find a new job? That’s how you don’t burn the bridge from the other side… It doesn’t even require you to actually take responsibility, you just have to acknowledge it’s not their fault and make them feel you’re not taking it lightly
I think a lot of the way executives handle things like this is very similar to how kids handle problems. They continue to try to cover it up and downplay it in hopes that everything will be over soon and no one will talk about it. They say “this is an adjustment” or “it’s a transitory period” while continuing to do additional lay offs and saying “we just need to put this all behind us”, instead of ripping the bandaid off.
Just treat people like another adult on equal footing with you. It’s not that hard.
HR will say it’s your fault so that the company saves on severance and unemployment insurance reimbursements. They pass off those costs to state taxes and the fired employees.
Admitting fault and admitting they are firing perfectly capable workers is more expensive and hurts the bottom line, which is all they are really there to protect.
Yeah, that’s my point. By not acknowledging how bad it is, it makes it worse. People get mentally exhausted, and productivity drops. They think they can fool people into believing this are sliiiiiiiiightly better, which means the company should do better. But that’s based on the belief that your employees don’t see through your bullshit. Any benefit they get from trying to game employee’s responses (read: get them to believe your corporate bullshit) they end up losing more through the negative impact it has on those left standing after the firings.
I agree on the outcome, I’m saying they don’t care what the fired employee really thinks, they just need to cover their asses in the event an employee sues them. And they are also doing it to discourage the fired employee from suing by showing them they’ve already built a case against them.
I have seen a pattern of the boss or even second-tier management not even knowing it’s about to happen. Like the now-famous Cloudflare botched “layoff-not-a-layoff” decisions are being made by folks who probably don’t even know the people they are firing, they are just names on a spreadsheet.
The good managers I’ve worked for think this way, they are there to make their team better and actually care about them as humans. For anyone thinking about going into management, every business I’ve ever seen needs more managers that care, it’s a worthwhile job and even fewer people can do it correctly than many technical jobs. Managing poorly is trivial, so we all think it’s “easy”.