The Great Layoff Tamasha

The CEO of Better.com fired hundreds on a Zoom call. The CEO of HyperSocial posted a selfie of himself crying while he did it.

Byju Raveendran wrote to his employees saying that he would be laying off 5 percent of them but that he was losing 5 percent of Byju, meaning himself. This was so poorly received that it became a moment in pop culture of its own.

Unacademy laid off 125 people in April. In July they committed to no further layoffs. And then they laid off 350 more in November.

And then Amazon laid off 10,000 employees last week. The communication was faceless, private, and clinical. It has been called inhumane.

Which brings us to the question, is there a good way to lay off employees? Does such a thing even exist?

In this episode of Cost to Company, Shreevar and Sneha interview Karthik Srinivasan, behemoth of corporate communications in India, to ask, are there best practices for communicating a layoff? And if so, what are they?

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