CNN CEO Chris Licht announced on Wednesday that layoffs were coming.
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CNN told staff Wednesday that layoffs had started. Affected employees would be notified Thursday.
Some HR experts say advance notice is helpful, but one said it could create unnecessary anxiety.
A company’s approach to layoffs can affect its ability to attract and retain talent.
CNN employees on Wednesday received a memo from the CEO saying the company had started conducting layoffs. Anyone who was losing their job would be informed … the next day.
In the past several months, layoffs have rippled across numerous industries. Employers have taken different approaches. Elon Musk slashed half of Twitter’s staff by locking them out of their work laptops. The founders of the payments platform Stripe published a detailed memo outlining how they would support the people they were laying off.
As for Licht’s decision to announce layoffs ahead of time, two human-resources experts told Insider the advance notice showed compassion and transparency. Another expert said the announcement was an unnecessary source of anxiety. Their divergent reactions suggest that perhaps there isn’t a great way to let employees know you’re getting rid of them. Above all, the approach you settle on should take into account that, as much as this is a business issue, you’re dealing with people and their livelihoods.
Advance notice of layoffs gives employees time to emotionally prepare
CNN employs 3,000 people in the US and has already let hundreds of staff members go in the past several months, Insider’s Claire Atkinson reported. The layoffs are part of the CNN parent Warner Bros. Discovery’s efforts to cut costs.
In the memo, CEO Chris Licht called the process of conducting layoffs a “gut punch.” He said that after notifying those employees who were losing their jobs, he would follow up with more details. Laid-off employees would receive information about severance, and anyone eligible for a bonus in 2022 would still receive one.
“I think employees appreciate advance notice that layoffs are coming,” said Jaime Klein, the CEO of the human-resources consultancy Inspire HR. It gives them a chance to “emotionally prepare” for the possibility of losing their job, she added, and “if they are not personally laid off, they can be aware in order to be extra sensitive and supportive of impacted employees.”
Jason Averbook, the CEO of the HR consultancy Leapgen, said the notice “gives people an opportunity to let things settle in” and consider how a layoff might affect them. “That’s really, really important,” he added, because it shows that leadership is being relatively transparent and has some empathy for employees.
Then again, the memo didn’t specify which areas of the organization would be affected, indicating only that a “limited number of individuals” would be let go. Ayesha Whyte, an HR executive and employment attorney at the Virginia law firm Dixon Whyte, said this was a mistake. “Just narrow it, so some people can take a breath,” she said. “This is really anxiety-provoking,” she added.
Employers should consider how their approach to layoffs will affect their reputation
Whyte said leaving everyone hanging for a day might backfire for CNN.
Even people who end up keeping their job will “remember this feeling that now everybody has,” she said. When those people are approached by another employer, Whyte added, they’ll think about the stress that CNN’s announcement caused them and think: “I see that, really when it comes down to it, you’re going to look out for CNN. So maybe I should start looking out for me.”
Averbook disagreed, describing Licht’s memo as “very empathetic.” And when you conduct layoffs with empathy, he said, “it’s much, much easier to recover from.” If you ever want to rehire some of the employees you’re letting go, it helps to leave a good impression. (Averbook said companies that conduct mass layoffs typically end up asking 25% to 50% to return within a year.) How the layoff is handled therefore can affect whether they’ll come back.
Layoffs done right, Averbook added, “are really a combination of empathy and economics.”