Breaking the bad news of downsizing
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Change management is a big drama. In our country of origin, New Zealand, there complex legal obligations to navigate, and failure to safely navigate these will result in legal challenges for unfair dismissal, if employees were not fairly consulted with, or redeployed where suitable. Other legal environments don’t have such obligations, and it’s as simple as giving notice and paying compensation. Other environments don’t require compensation. This article isn’t legal advice- we aim to make these articles as universal as possible so we can’t provide you with the right way to terminate people within the laws of your land, so here a few human things to remember about humans.
People get it- businesses can go badly
People have the same attitude towards an organisation’s current prospects as they do the national economy. Unless you specifically watch the economy, you have a vague, background understanding and assumption that things are general going okay, but are half prepared to see or hear a headline one day ‘things aren’t going well and will get worse’. Employees are the same with the organisation’s prospects- mostly blissfully ignorant, but the day the message comes down the line- things aren’t great, and its going to get tougher- this largely doesn’t cause outbreaks of anxiety and alarm, but elicits a common feeling of disappointment, followed by stoic resilience.
If one day you pull people together to say the following key things: sorry, things aren’t great, we hoped things would get better, and we’ve been trying to turn it around, but we need to be realistic that we can’t carry this many people, so we need to lose some staff. No one likes saying this, no one likes hearing it, but no one will be shocked by it.
Honesty vs panic
But bad news can be alarming, it can lead to diminished confidence in the company, increased silos, self-protection behaviours and voluntary turnover. Bad news can spook people, so organisations are reticent to be too honest with their communciations with employees, some more than others.
On the other hand, if the internal comms has otherwise been overly positive, it can be seen as dishonest. In 1945, many Japanese civilians were shocked to find their cities being bombed, because according to the news, Japan was winning the war. Let’s not compare your internal comms to Japanese wartime propaganda, other than to say overly optimistic reporting can result in emotional whiplash the day the bad news comes through.
Your takeaway- when in doubt, remember they are adults
I have a test that I’ve used elsewhere- the grandma test- is this how you would like your grandmother to be treated? Perhaps a different, but similar test, is ‘are you treating people like adults?’ are you giving them the benefit of the doubt of being practical, reasonable, stoic and resilient.
It’s too easy to slip into the mindset that people will be emotive, petulant, and/or unreasonable. Some may, either in the short term or long term, and that’s fine- it’s bad news, they’re allowed to be gutted. But they are adults, they will bounce back from the gut punch of downsizing, so give them the courtesy of remembering they are grown ups.
Rip the band aid?
Hopefully you know the metaphor- better to get the pain over and done with through an intense but short act. I say this with a question mark, because it’s a question you will be asking yourself through- better to break bad news slowly with as much rhetoric sugar as possible, keep it short and blunt, or some compromise of the two?
I can’t answer, but I will say this- people are terrible listeners. Too much sugar and they will only hear that, not the message you’re trying to get across. So soften the blow, but not to the extent the message gets missed.
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