Layoff Notices Sent by Email --- Delivering bad news broadly limits suspense but can seem impersonal

"At first, Jeremy Joslin thought the email announcing his layoff was a phishing attempt. It was 5:30 a.m. in California when he saw it, and with so many technology job cuts afoot, the Google software engineer thought a scammer was trying to capitalize on the news.

The message, sent to his personal inbox, directed him to a website for newly laid-off Google employees and told him to set up an account. He went to check his work email and found he was locked out. The news was real: Mr. Joslin, a 20-year company veteran, had been laid off with a template email, one of roughly 12,000 workers Google's parent, Alphabet, said this month it was letting go.

Covid-19 has rewritten many work norms, and moved even more on-the-job communications to email, Slack and other messaging tools. Yet layoffs via email still come as a shock.

After a pandemic hiring spree in which big-tech firms such as Meta Platforms Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. recruited tens of thousands of new hires via LinkedIn, Zoom interviews and other virtual means, many of those same companies are turning to email to conduct the biggest wave of industry layoffs in years.

Human-resources managers say the speed at which email layoffs can deliver difficult news to many workers at once can limit confusion and the dread of waiting for a fateful call or meeting invite. And some workers say that being able to absorb the decision in written form, privately, can help soften the blow.

Many others, though, say cuts via inbox feel cold and unkind.

The email's generic tone felt "like a slap in the face," Mr. Joslin says, after his two decades at the company.

Afterward, he says, neither his now-former manager nor HR contacted him for follow-up conversations. He has contacted colleagues via LinkedIn to say goodbye and "get some closure," he says.

A Google spokesperson declined to comment, but cited an email to employees from CEO Sundar Pichai, in which Mr. Pichai announced the news and said the impact on Googlers "weighs heavily on me" and thanked those leaving for their contributions.

A spokesperson for Amazon.com Inc., which recently laid off more than 18,000 people, confirmed that the company conducted layoffs via email to ensure quick notification, but that workers who were emailed were given the opportunity to have a direct conversation with their manager and HR that same day.

Even in a hybrid work world, most workers say they prefer to be laid off in person. In a January survey of more than 9,800 workers conducted by SurveyMonkey on behalf of The Wall Street Journal, 67% of workers said they would prefer to be laid off via an in-person meeting, while 11% said they would want the news by email, and fewer still, 7%, via a virtual meeting. Even the majority of full- and part-time remote workers said they'd want the news delivered face-to-face.

Erica McDonnell, an acupuncturist, has been laid off twice during the pandemic from clinics that closed -- in person in August 2020, and via email the following year. The note was tersely written, she says, and, accordingly, felt like a poor delivery method, especially given that she had been at work the previous day: "We could've just talked about this."

Yet in-person meetings can be difficult, as can processing highly emotional news in front of your boss, some people say. Phoebe Gavin, who has been public about her own layoff this month on social media, says she was grateful to learn she'd been let go from her job as an executive director of talent and development at Vox, the news site owned by Vox Media, via a regularly scheduled video call with her boss.

"There was no awkwardness," says Ms. Gavin, whose job was cut as part of a layoff round affecting 7% of Vox Media's workforce. "I could press the red button, close my laptop and get under my blankets for a couple hours."

The vast majority of Ms. Gavin's colleagues were informed of their layoffs via email. Ms. Gavin says she was grateful forthe "gentler experience" of a conversation.

Harvard Business School professor Sandra Sucher, who studies layoffs, says emails can play a useful role in terminations, especially as workforces become more far-flung. Ideally, she says, a top leader should personally communicate news about impending layoffs to the company -- while also taking responsibility, apologizing and explaining the rationale.

Then, that leader can say that anyone affected will receive an email in a few minutes. Simultaneous emails, she says, prevent workers from having to wait hours in suspense.

But those emails also need to also let workers know their managers will quickly follow up for a direct conversation, she says, offering workers a chance to be heard and ask questions.

"The enemy is not the tool, the enemy is how the tool gets used," she says.

Phyllis Hartman, president of PGHR Consulting Inc., a Pittsburgh-based HR consulting firm, says any insensitivity during a layoff increases the likelihood that disgruntled employees will legally challenge their terminations.

"You're setting yourself up for trouble," she says. "If they're angry, they're going to look for a reason to get back at you."

What matters isn't how the news is delivered, but what is said, says James Abele, a former senior solutions engineer at cloud-services company Akamai Technologies Inc., who lost his job last year after 17 years at the company. Mr. Abele was informed of his termination via a video call, during which an HR representative made an offhand remark that stung, he says.

"It made the moment hurt more than it would have otherwise," he says. A banal email would have been preferable, he adds. Akamai declined to comment.

Youyou Zhou recently learned via email while vacationing with friends in Aruba that she had lost her job as a Vox senior data editor. She says she was comforted by being surrounded by beauty there, plus having a follow-up video call with HR and the editor in chief.

That she was notified by email didn't perturb her. "I felt like layoffs never happen happily," she says." [1]

1. Unkind Cuts? Layoff Notices Sent by Email --- Delivering bad news broadly limits suspense but can seem impersonal
Te-Ping, Chen.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y. [New York, N.Y]. 31 Jan 2023: A.9.