The Cruel Reason Laid-Off Employees Are Suddenly Being Labeled As Low Performers, According To An HR Professional
There's a good chance that the laid-off employees aren't "low performers" at all.
VGstockstudio | Shutterstock A new trend has recently emerged in corporate America. Employees are being laid off, which is nothing new in and of itself; however, the reasoning has changed. Instead of blaming downsizing, companies are publicly calling their former employees "low performers" to excuse their termination.
A group of business and HR experts discussed the cruel reason why laid-off employees are suddenly being labeled as low performers.
The group of professionals discussed this topic on a recent episode of the "HR Besties Podcast." Hosted by Leigh Henderson, Ashley Herd, and Jamie Jackson, the podcast makes business concepts fun and digestible for the average person. A clip of the episode was posted on TikTok.
Henderson, Herd, and Jackson’s guest, Maureen Wiley Clough, host of her own podcast "It Gets Late Early," talked with the women about recent layoffs and how they are different from mass layoffs of the past.
“I need to understand this, ‘cause there must be something I’m missing,” Clough said. “So business is business. Layoffs happen. [Expletive] happens. It’s corporate. This is how it goes, right?”
Clough then brought up the real issue, contrasting just how different recent layoffs have been. “But I, for the life of me, cannot understand the decision to publicly label departing, impacted, laid-off/fired employees as, quote, ‘low performers,’ which has been done at Meta and other companies of late.”
“Why?” she asked. “Why would a company do that?” Why not just say, ‘We had a reduction in force?’ Why not just say, like, ‘We had a restructuring?’ Literally anything else. Like, why? Can you please help me get it?”
Herd stepped in to bluntly address Clough’s question. “They care more about their shareholders than the human beings that work for them,” she said simply. “That’s it.” All of the women nodded in agreement.
Meta is one of many companies that dubbed their former employees low performers.
While layoffs have become an unfortunate yet common aspect of the American workforce, Meta is probably the most well-known company that laid off workers because they considered them to be low performers. Meta’s CEO is tech giant Mark Zuckerberg and it is the parent company of Facebook and Instagram.
Reporting for Fast Company, Joe Berkowitz said that Meta had laid off almost a quarter of its workforce in 2022 and 2023. On a single day in early 2024, they laid off an additional 5% or 3,600 jobs.
In an internal company memo, Zuckerberg said, “I’ve decided to raise the bar on performance management and move out low performers faster. We typically manage out people who aren’t meeting expectations over the course of a year, but now we’re going to do more extensive performance-based cuts during this cycle.”
Berkowitz reported that many former Meta employees who were laid off took to social media to express their dismay and reject the idea that they were “low performers.”
He also referenced a Business Insider article which “[claimed] Meta’s director of people experience allowed managers to add employees from higher-performance tiers to those marked for layoffs if they couldn’t reach their reduction goals just from lower-rated employees.” This could explain why some employees were blindsided by their layoffs and claimed to only receive positive performance reviews.
How do layoffs benefit shareholders?
In a Nasdaq article written by Sarah Hansen, the reporter explained that “layoffs are about cutting costs.” The idea is that layoffs are made when a company is struggling, like when its stock value decreases. Profits and stock performance will increase when they let some employees go, improving the outlook for shareholders.
This would certainly lend credibility to Herd’s thoughts that companies simply care about shareholders more than people. By labeling the laid-off employees as low performers, they shift the blame away from their struggling business and attempt to justify their decision.
Still, while shareholders might hold all of the power, companies would do well to remember who got them to the place they’re at today.
Mary-Faith Martinez is a writer with a bachelor’s degree in English and Journalism who covers news, psychology, lifestyle, and human interest topics.