Dilbert Strategy

Tips for Laying Off Employees in a Social Media World

Late last year Techcrunch posted about the layoffs traking place due to the economic downturn. There are two main themes in the post; first some of the layoffs are clearing out of dead wood and the other being it is hard to keep layoffs a secret when everyone is a publisher.

To the first point. This is not new companies have always used downturns to shed deadwood, not sure why this was even raised by Michael Arrington.

The second point is far more interesting and will have major impacts on employers for years to come. In a world where anyone can publish, and does, how you manage this process is critical.

But in the age of everyone-is-a-publisher it takes just a second after someone is walked out the door for them to post about it on Twitter or their blog, and it spreads from there.

Blog posts, tweets, video content all remain in search engine caches for a very long time, if not forever! Which means if you are thinking of cutting back here are some tips for doing so in a social media world, some of these are just plain common sense.

1. Do it quickly, ok this is always the case but even more so now. Use the old carpenter’s rule “measure twice, cut once” the last thing you want to people having multiple chances of publishing about the process.
2. Remember the jobs you are cutting have people in them. Treat them that way.
3. But also remember humans do not make rational logical decisions based on information given to them. They will instead pattern match with either their own experience, or collective experience expressed as stories. This usually means they will react poorly initially.
4. Provide employees some advice about being careful if vent online, make sure if they do it will not lead to nasty legal battles down the track.
5. Expect things to be blogged, tweeted, and generally discussed.
6. Monitor the internet to see what is being said. Allow people to vent but if needed gently correct the messages if they are blatantly wrong.
7. Don’t get into a online publishing war over the smallest of things published, sometimes ignoring it is the best option. The more times search engines find a topic the higher they rank it in the results. Also bloggers tend to react quickly and harshly don’t give them additional fuel to write about.
8. Communicate with the employees who are leaving, but do so honestly and openly, limit the corporate BS.
9. Communicate with the employees who are staying, again do so honestly and openly, limit the corporate BS.
10. Setup a Facebook alumni group (if you don’t have one), automatically invite all of the employees who are leaving. Remember some will be boomerangs.
11. Setup an internal wiki to allow the people leaving to document their knowledge in a central location. This way you might collect some of the knowledge that is leaving before it leaves.
    Communicate to your customers, suppliers, media, analysts and blogosphere what is going on and why.
12. Make sure you are not applying double standards with your executive team as this will certainly get people talking.
13. Make sure the rest of the organisations is also cutting back on expenses. If you keep people flying first class while laying off employees this will also get people talking.
14. Highlight the other cost cutting measures that the organisation is taking to show layoffs aren’t the only thing.
15. It is a great time to have the CEO start an blog, this will show them as a real person a factor that should not be overlooked during this period of change.
16. Finally make sure you pay severance packages fairly and on time.

These are my initial thoughts as well as Michael Spechts' have to head off and join the family but chip in with your own.

Productivity Paradox of Social Networks

Social networking tends to take a bit of a beating in the mainstream press when it comes to the business value. They seem to ignore the good examples of how organizations use these tools, such as Dow Chemical to encourage their alumni and employees on long term leave to return. In the first three months of usage they had 25,000 referrals, 24 full-time jobs and 40 contract roles filled through the use of a social network (Source Gartner).

Which brings me to two very good articles I read this week.

First up was from the UK’s HR Zone looked at the benefits social network tools provide organizations in reducing the barriers to communication. Organizational behavior research has shown that collaborative Web 2.0 tools are particularly effective where technical knowledge is valued. In complex organizations like multinational corporations, finding someone who possesses highly specific expertise is often difficult. One reason is that expertise remains ‘hidden’ - and consequently unexploited - within organizational structures.

They even go on to quote a UK-based think tank indicating that social networks encourage people to create productive relationships and work the way people do.

The second was from Harvard Business Review on the benefits of social networks, focused around information discovery and sharing. Here we see figures such as 7%, 30% and even 40% improvements in productivity when employees where using communication patterns facilitated by social networks. What CEO doesn’t want 40% more out of their existing workforce!

With all this research being released I hope we will see some more positive articles from the mainstream media.

What are your thoughts on this blog post that was posted on Michael Specht's blog this past month?