> Maybe it's a very distributed team, I guess then there's isn't a great way to do that.
If you want to do it all at once, for all time zones... If there's overlapping "core hours" for different time zones, or you can schedule an all-hands videoconf time, you can do it then. Or do one for the global West, and one for the global East (which will have different cultural nuances anyway, and possibly separate management structures).
It's not that different than in-office. Except, for in-office, remaining colleagues see a person boxing up their stuff and walking out with their stuff in a box, or (worse) security escorting the people off the property. And then there's usually the desk of a terminate colleague there as a visual reminder for awhile.
One in-office layoff I saw, they arranged for all the people to be laid off to have impromptu meetings with their managers, and to go to conference rooms, at the same time... and then notified everyone still at their desks to go to an all-(remaining)-hands meeting, in a different office space, where they were told of the layoffs. Most of the axed people were already gone when the others returned. It might have been good intentions, but I'm not sure that was a good move.
It's a tricky problem, whether in-office or remote. Partly because the situation isn't right. ICs are more often let go because management failed, rather than any fault of the ICs.
> the situation isn't right. ICs are more often let go because management failed, rather than any fault of the ICs.
That is pretty much guaranteed to happen though, unless you have a system where the assumption is employment for life at all costs. Management's job is to make decisions, many decisions won't work out, and for some of those, the consequences mean some change in what roles are going to be needed. Sometimes it's a management success that means a certain role isn't needed too ("we successfully rolled out software to book business trips, so we don't need 17 travel bookers anymore").
And anyway, let's stipulate that managers should also be punished by being sacked for any big mistake: That wouldn't save ICs, since if you're, say, pivoting away from making furniture, you still don't need the furniture makers, even if you sack the "VP of Furniture" or the CEO. And it'd be stupid to appoint a new VP of Furniture over and over to keep trying to 'make furniture happen' just to save the jobs.
These are traditional textbook examples for layoffs, of the kind told to impressionable young aspiring economists. Sometimes they are true.
Often, the company actually still needs those skills for what it's doing, but it's a bean-counter move, to "appease investors". Knowing that this will put more pressure on remaining employees, and also knowing that they'll soon be hiring for the same roles.
This is another way it's not right. There's little sense of obligation to the employee.
I was part of one mass layoff. They had two meetings at our site, one for the people being retained and one for the people being let go. We had an idea what was happening but you didn't know until your meeting started which group you were in. It was done in person though not via a video message.
If you want to do it all at once, for all time zones... If there's overlapping "core hours" for different time zones, or you can schedule an all-hands videoconf time, you can do it then. Or do one for the global West, and one for the global East (which will have different cultural nuances anyway, and possibly separate management structures).
It's not that different than in-office. Except, for in-office, remaining colleagues see a person boxing up their stuff and walking out with their stuff in a box, or (worse) security escorting the people off the property. And then there's usually the desk of a terminate colleague there as a visual reminder for awhile.
One in-office layoff I saw, they arranged for all the people to be laid off to have impromptu meetings with their managers, and to go to conference rooms, at the same time... and then notified everyone still at their desks to go to an all-(remaining)-hands meeting, in a different office space, where they were told of the layoffs. Most of the axed people were already gone when the others returned. It might have been good intentions, but I'm not sure that was a good move.
It's a tricky problem, whether in-office or remote. Partly because the situation isn't right. ICs are more often let go because management failed, rather than any fault of the ICs.