CEO Who Laid Off 1,800 Workers Claimed That 1,050 Of Them Were ‘Underperformers’ — Hurting Their Chances Of Getting Another Job
The CEO claimed that if employees weren't meeting new performance requirements, they no longer had a place at the company.
Stock-Asso | Shutterstock Global financial company Intuit recently announced its plan for layoffs based on employee performance, according to an email from the CEO.
Employees were told that the bar of expectations was being raised significantly, and if they didn't meet the threshold, they no longer had a place within the company.
The Intuit CEO laid off 1,800 workers claiming that 1,050 of them were 'underperformers.'
On July 10, Intuit, which owns TurboTax, QuickBooks, MailChimp, and more, announced that it was laying off 1,800 employees, or about 10% of its workforce. Compared to other tech companies' layoffs, Inuit claimed that the main reason had to do with performance and work ethic.
"We've significantly raised the bar on our expectations of employee performance," the CEO, Sasan Goodarzi, wrote in the email included in an SEC filing. Goodarzi added that the company believes its staff would be able to find success elsewhere if they were let go from their current positions at Intuit.
On top of that, the company is also reducing the number of executive employees by 10% and is planning on cutting 300 employees.
The reason, according to the email, was to "streamline work and reallocate resources toward key growth areas." Goodarzi noted in the email that the cuts weren't a cost-reduction measure, as is the case for most layoffs, but that the company was planning to hire a "nearly equivalent number of employees in fiscal 2025."
"We do not do layoffs to cut costs, and that remains true in this case," Goodarzi said in the email. U.S. employees at Intuit will have their last day on September 9, 2024.
The company even laid out details about severance packages and support, explaining that employees "will receive a package that includes a minimum of 16 weeks of pay, plus two additional weeks for every year of service." It also explained that laid-off employees would have six months of healthcare and access to career transition and job placement services.
The company claimed that it wanted to shift its priorities to cater to the 'era of AI.'
It's no secret that AI has become a focal point for many companies, and Intuit is no different. In the email, Goodarzi stressed the importance of the company prioritizing "one of the most significant technology shifts in our lifetime."
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Intuit isn't the only tech company shifting its staffing to make room for AI advancement. Other companies like Google, Microsoft, and Dropbox have claimed that AI is the reason for their layoffs as well. Of course, it's a bit of a frightening reality that people are being pushed aside for technology that is essentially replacing their role in a company.
On top of that, to fire over a thousand employees based on the impression of their performance is a bit unfair. CEOs and other execs have no idea what's happening in their employee's personal lives, and instead of taking the time to question why their workload hasn't been at 100%, they resort to laying them off.
Suppose many employees are "underperforming," as the CEO stated in the email. In that case, it seems to reflect more on the company and leadership than the individual employees themselves.
Unfortunately, publicly announcing layoffs due to performance issues doesn't exactly help in finding a new job. In fact, the publicity does the exact opposite.
For the most part, layoffs are not a reflection of your job performance and have no impact on finding something new. Unfortunately, Intuit's announcement specifically stated that performance was the driving force behind the cuts.
It's unfathomable why Goodarzi would make an announcement like that and it does not reflect well on the laid-off employees or Intuit as an organization. The best severance package available doesn't make up for that kind of attack on the character of the workforce that made up the backbone of your company.
It hurts the employees left behind as well. If you're laying off hordes of people, then the existing employees have to scramble to pick up the slack in the timeframe between people leaving and more people being hired. That's also unfair. The employees left may be taking up projects and tasks that are probably not in their job description, overworking to accommodate the lost team members, and keeping their mouths shut out of sheer fear that they might be next on the chopping block.
Most of us can agree that a company that doesn't care about the well-being of its employees is going to have a hard time finding people who actually want to devote their time and energy to working for them.
Nia Tipton is a Chicago-based entertainment, news, and lifestyle writer whose work delves into modern-day issues and experiences.