Boss Sends An Odd WhatsApp Message To His Staff Saying The Entire Team Is Being Laid Off
He was criticized for sending a mass message to his team instead of scheduling a group meeting to break the news.
VGstockstudio / Shutterstock A boss' random method of telling his entire team that they were being laid off has elicited a bit of criticism and also incited debate around how an employer should let their team know they are out of a job.
In a TikTok video, a creator named Ben Askins, who makes content around toxic bosses and career mishaps, shared the message that an anonymous boss sent to his entire team and many people are not happy about it.
The boss sent an odd WhatsApp message to his staff saying the entire team was being laid off.
"This is the actual WhatsApp that someone sent to their team, making all of them redundant," Askins began in his video.
The boss began his message by telling his staff that he'd sold his business which was a gym. He informed his team that the man acquiring the gym had a "huge amount of experience" and was excited about the vision he had for the business.
"The good news is that it will see someone coming in with fresh ideas to breathe new life into the gym. The bad news is that as he has his own vision and business model, he is not looking to keep on any of the current paid staff. So this message is everyone's one-month notice as he is due to take over on the 1st of Feb," the boss told his staff.
Askins criticized this boss and pointed out that this entire situation was "ridiculous." He said that a good boss would never just send a mass WhatsApp message to everyone on his staff letting them know that they were out of work. It was inconsiderate and showed that the boss clearly didn't care about his employees.
"Think about how poor you have to be as a human being to get this bit wrong," Askins remarked. "He's literally gone, 'I have good news and bad news,' and he led with the good news. What is wrong with this person?"
Photo: Syda Productions / Canva Pro
Layoffs are sometimes inevitable, but the least an employer can do is schedule a group meeting or call where they deliver the news to their team and leave room open for questions or concerns. Employees should be offered a moment to talk about it instead of just being told they're getting laid off and not having an opportunity to speak with anyone about it.
More and more companies have started laying off their employees.
Most layoffs are quite messy, and there seems to be a stigma surrounding them despite how often they appear to happen. In 2022, according to a layoffs tracker, 1,040 tech companies laid off 159,666 employees, and 256 tech companies laid off 82,769 employees in the first 30 days of 2023. Forty percent of Americans have been laid off at least once due to factors beyond their control.
So far, in January 2024, Citigroup announced it was cutting back 10% of its workforce, Google cut hundreds of jobs across its engineering and hardware teams, and Amazon reduced employees in its Prime, Twitch, Audible, and other entertainment divisions. Even the NFL has offered voluntary buyouts to at least 200 employees.
When an employer makes the move to lay off either a mass amount of employees or just a couple, the way the news is delivered can have a huge impact on future endeavors, whether they realize it or not. Former employees can end up popping back up later down the line, this time as colleagues, partners, or even consumers of the business.
You never want to sever a professional relationship when you don't know how it will crop back up in the future. It's why employees are urged to give 2-weeks' notice before quitting, and employers should announce layoffs in a way that doesn't leave employees wondering what happened.
In an interview with CNBC, Jennifer Benz, a senior vice president at the benefits communications firm Segal Benz, recommended that leaders show "empathy" and be careful about focusing on their own feelings "rather than being sympathetic to the situation they have created for their workforce."
Employees shouldn't be treated like criminals or that their work wasn't valuable to the company during the time they were employed. Sending a mass message to a team isn't the best way to go about breaking the news that people have been laid off, and employers should take into consideration the best measures possible so no one ends up being hurt or blindsided.
Nia Tipton is a Chicago-based entertainment, news, and lifestyle writer whose work delves into modern-day issues and experiences.