Have you recently experienced a “career accident”? You may be the victim of “corporate crowding out,” an unfortunate but supposedly necessary outcome of your company’s “optimal sizing.” Managers are running out of ways to tell you you don’t have a job anymore.
Layoffs in the first month of 2024 left tens of thousands of people unemployed, with the tech industry alone shedding jobs. 32,000 roles. How bad news is delivered is more important than ever as companies I’m afraid it will be canceled on social media after a poorly executed final conversation. Managers use all sorts of euphemisms to avoid being honest with their employees.
Harvard Business School professor Sandra Sucher said that sensitive speech is the result of “moral disengagement,” the harm-doer’s attempt to rationalize and soften his actions for himself. Ultimately, the message for workers is the same: they lose their jobs.
“Just because you call it a downsizing or an organizational change—and it very likely is—doesn’t mean employees won’t feel something as a result of what you’re doing,” Sucher said.
The lexicon for euphemistically describing layoffs became more common in the late 1980s and 1990s, as job cuts became the norm, Sucher said. Previously, layoffs were more rare and were mostly the result of a manufacturer closing its plant in the city.
At the beginning of December, Spotify Technology SA chose for the term “right size” in a letter announcing job cuts. Statement from Citigroup Inc. In November mentioned a “simplified operating model” outlining plans to cut 20,000 jobs. Mark Zuckerberg at Meta Platforms Inc. transmitted “organizational changes” in a lengthy memo that included a number of personnel changes at the company, including layoffs. and United Parcel Service Inc. announced “workforce reduction” of 12,000 people during the last earnings report. “We are going to align our organization with our strategy,” said CEO Carol Thome. transcript.
According to Stanford professor Robert Sutton, managers believe that such vague language reassures workers. He called the “numbing” language “the oxide of jargon.”
“They seem to believe that if they use more vague and less emotive language, people won’t be as upset,” Sutton said. Instead, he says, it has the opposite effect.
The general rejection of the word “layoff” is likely due to the stigma associated with it, according to Wayne Cascio, a professor at the University of California, Denver School of Business. The term “layoffs” is used to describe termination without cause, whereas “termination” now usually occurs in response to a violation of company rules.
Synonyms for layoffs are not entirely useless. They vary in the breadth of potential value, which helps the company decide on next steps. “Simplification” could mean that people are going to be laid off or that the company is reducing the number of meetings. On the other hand, “restructuring” can also simply mean that an employee is changing departments. “Further leave” is something completely different, allowing employees to return to work after unpaid leave. According to Cascio, “right size” is intentionally vague, so the company is leaving room for itself to change its plan.
The wording may also vary by region, according to Sucher, who said “reduction in force” was used more often in Europe.
In general, there is a good way to announce a resignation that is not euphemistic. Business leaders must take responsibility for job losses, experts say, especially as many are responding to a post-pandemic hiring overload.
“You have to face the fact that you did something that you know directly harmed their lives,” Sucher said.