Don’t Leave Me This Way
I recently put a post on Linked IN about BT’s plan to get rid of 55,000 employees and how that would impact some who had done everything asked of them by the business and would be left high and dry, through no fault of their own.
Then Google said, “Hold my beer!” And sacked 12,000 employees. By email. Since then, 3 ‘Googlers’ have committed suicide.
There’s so much to say about this and what is says about the role of work in our lives and in our society. (This is going to be another fun-packed edition, as you can tell!).
Let’s start with the sacking of employees as a business strategy. You might say it is properly called ‘redundancy’ because people are given compensation and support. I say you’re splitting hairs to some degree but I’ll go with the distinction because in many ways ‘redundancy’ is worse than dismissal.
In fact, ‘redundancy’ is an everyday brutality in corporate life, carried out in plain sight. It’s been normalised because it’s commonplace. It’s commonplace because it’s been normalised. Echelons of MBA grads have been taught it’s a legitimate and acceptable way to massage the numbers because they don’t teach ethics or empathy in MBA school. And Wall Street doesn’t have either of those in the first place.
Redundancy is an individual tragedy but a collective shrug. I am reminded of the quote attributed to Stalin “If only one man dies of hunger, that is a tragedy. If millions die, that’s only statistics.” 12,000 is just a number. The three suicides, well…
Redundancy is a betrayal of trust. People do what the organisation requires of them, often subjugating their own needs and desires, on the understanding that they will be cared for. If you get dismissed for disciplinary reasons, you have breached that trust and so it’s your own fault.
If you are made redundant, it is not your fault (they will tell you that also. You will still blame yourself, another unfair consequence). So who is responsible? No-one, it seems. Although clearly someone, or some group of people, took the decision but you are unable to ask them why or to hold them to account. (In the Google case, you’ll be pleased to know the CEO, Sundar Pincher, says “I take full responsibility for the decisions that led us here”, which is big of him (not). Perhaps he’ll share his bonus with those he’s jettisoned.)
Research shows that redundancy damages an individual’s trust in the world, their belief that it is a fundamentally benevolent place and ‘things will work out’. This damage is most marked in the first year but it could be permanent. They only had five years of data last time I looked, and it hadn’t disappeared by then, so it seems likely it does stay with people for their lifetime.
It’s also damaging to people’s mental health, which hardly needs saying given the consequences of Google’s actions. Collectively, our mental health is not exactly robust at the moment. These mass sackings will send some over the edge.
Whilst we continue to celebrate CEOs for this sort of action and applaud the improvement in the share price it will likely produce (which further rewards the C-suite who perpetrated it), it will only increase as a practice and cause untold damage on innocent people and on society. And people will, rightly, be increasingly sceptical and disengaged at work, if only for self-protection.
A Little Respect
Let’s look at the method of sacking.
The ‘best practise’ (I hope you’ve been practicing your hollow laughter) used to be to call people into a room and tell them they’ve been made redundant and then say nothing. Allow them to get upset, scream and shout, throw things around, whatever they wanted until they blew themselves out. This stops ‘emotional contagion’ to the rest of the workforce (no, really, that’s the reason).
Then you’d give them a brown box, take them back to their desk to collect their belongings and give them the ‘walk of shame’ back through the office as you escort them off the premises. Oh, and take their pass, their phone and any other artefacts of their corporate identity off of them.
Brutal, right?
But now you don’t even have to bother with all that faff. Now you just send them an email and then cut off their access to email and all the other systems - effectively ‘de-personing’ them, corporately. (At least, you can in the US. Other countries have laws about this stuff).
So Google sent them an email. This is the same Google who has been asking them to come back to the office, a place where they could have summoned them and given them the news face-to-face. With some compassion and humanity.
I’m not saying the email method is better or worse than the office method. In both cases, the primary consideration seems to be minimising the impact on the organisation rather than the individual. Indeed, at the expense of the individual.
That’s what I rail against. It’s callous and heartless.
I get that sometimes organisations need less employees but it can be done well. I wrote some time ago about a remote company who could only do it by email but did it in a way that treated the people affected with dignity, respect and compassion. That should be a minimum, not an exception. Employees deserve that, especially when they’ve given their heart and soul.
No Diggity
Remember that famous letter that ‘Serge and Larry’ wrote (they sound like a comedy duo, don’t they)? One of their maxims, they proudly stated, was “Do No Evil”.
If you haven’t already, now’s the chance to perfect your hollow laughter.
All Of Me
In all employment contracts, there is a power asymmetry. The employer always has the upper hand, they define the terms and conditions of employment and can end it at any time (as Google and several others are proving right now). All the recent whinging about the balance of power tipping back to employees in a tight labour market, it’s only a relative rebalancing. The playing field is firmly tilted in the employers direction.
That’s OK, that’s how capitalism works, we know the deal. (Having said that, I’m a fan of more democratic ways of organising and unionisation and other ways of workplace organising). It’s a transaction. We get paid for our labour, be that physical or intellectual.
However, companies like Google want more. They want you to commit the the purpose, to work longer hours, to go above and beyond. They want you to give your heart and soul, to give your life. They even have a name for you as a reward - a ‘Googler’.
They want an asymmetry of commitment too. They want you to commit everything, and in return, well, they’ll probably look after you. At least until they decide they don’t need you anymore.
They are not alone of course, they are just one of the more pernicious. They give you the free food, the concierge services, the sleep pods and all the other ‘benefits’ to trick you into giving more and more of yourself. You don’t need a life outside of work, outside of Google, because Google IS your life. Until they decide it isn’t.
They are deliberately creating a dependency, but they do not reciprocate with care. To be a ‘Googler’ is to subjugate yourself to the company’s need, to disempower yourself for their benefit.
It’s toxic.
A cruder version of this gaslighting is the ‘we are one big family’ schtick. Well, family stand by you through thick and thin (unless they are dysfunctional). They don’t sack you when things get a bit sticky or it’s to their advantage to do so.
Don’t be fooled by the rhetoric. An employment contract is just that, a contract, and you are the junior partner in the transaction. Never forget that It’s no more than that.
The Times They Are A-Changing
It seems that the penny is dropping. Despite the ridiculous rhetoric about ‘Quiet Quitting’, also known as doing the job you are paid to do, 6 out of 10 people are disengaged in their work. Gallup has even called this group the ‘quiet quitters’ but it’s the only rational response to the current workplace. Why do extra when you’re reward is probably going to be more work, or maybe the sack?
Gen Z have no desire to get a job on these terms, either. They’ve seen how their parents have been betrayed and abused by employers and they are not interested in going down that path.
Ultimately, this is impacting organisations. They are struggling to attract talent, productivity is flatlining, employee turnover is going up. Unionisation is growing despite organisations’ efforts to suppress it.
It may be happening slowly but things are changing and momentum is building. I think there are grounds to be hopeful but we need to keep calling out the corporate bullshit, the hypocrisy and toxic behaviours. We need to keep opening up people’s eyes to what is really going on.
And keep getting angry about it.
Let Me Entertain You
The latest edition of Work Punks is out, and we welcome our first special guest, the fabulous Lizzie Benton of Liberty Mind! Lizzie shares our mission to make workplaces better and joins us as we discuss Change programmes, AI and lots more.
You can watch it on You Tube here.
‘Oh, but I’d like to listen to it as a podcast, Colin’ you say? Well, now you can!
We haven’t done the formal launch but you can access all the episodes, including this latest one with Lizzie, at www.workpunks.co.uk, or on all the major podcast platforms.
I am old enough to remember when corporations actually cared for their employees. Back when they had company picknicks, days at the lake, etc. Back when your fellow workers would chip in and help if you needed it.
If one job was being phased out, the company found a way to train you for the next new job. But that' all gone now.
corporations, at least the big tech companies, deserve to die. I mean, after all, google was started in 1998. Most tech corps don't last that long.
My 'redundancy' experience earlier this year was brutal. I'd organised a meeting with my manager and just as I started talk an HR rep appeared on the screen. I was read some scripted information and was told from thereon I was unable to talk to any of my colleagues about what had happened while some BS story was concocted to make it look like the decision to leave was mine. No humanity whatsoever. I was expecting it because there had already been extensive layoffs in response to an unexpected decline in revenues, but the expectation didn't soften the blow.
People's faith in work, their sense of loyalty to a company, and their engagement levels are incredibly low - work has eaten itself from the inside, we seem to be witnessing the dismantling of work alongside the other institutions which we now see as unfit to meet human needs - hopefully more human-centric models will emerge from the chaos.