Just your friendly neighborhood viral crying CEO | CEO of HyperSocial | 5x College Dropout
This will be the most vulnerable thing I'll ever share. I've gone back and forth whether to post this or not. We just had to layoff a few of our employees. I've seen a lot of layoffs over the last few weeks on LinkedIn. Most of those are due to the economy, or whatever other reason. Ours? My fault. I made a decision in February and stuck with that decision for far too long. Now, I know my team will say that "we made that decision together", but I lead us into it. And because of those failings, I had to do today, the toughest thing I've ever had to do. We've always been a people first business. And we always will be. Days like today, I wish I was a business owner that was only money driven and didn't care about who he hurt along the way. But I'm not. So, I just want people to see, that not every CEO out there is cold-hearted and doesn't care when he/she have to lay people off. I'm sure there are hundreds and thousands of others like me. The ones you don't see talked about. Because they didn't lay off 50 or 500 or 5000 employees. They laid off 1 or 2 or 3. 1 or 2 or 3 that would still be here if better decisions had been made. I know it isn't professional to tell my employees that I love them. But from the bottom of my heart, I hope they know how much I do. Every single one. Every single story. Every single thing that makes them smile and every single thing that makes them cry. Their families. Their friends. Their hobbies. I've always hire people based on who they are as people. People with great hearts, and great souls. And I can't think of a lower moment than this.
I'm sure I am not the first to say this, but maybe I am. Business decisions happen every day. Some good some bad. If this was a decisions that cost the company money then isn't full financial restitution in order, from you? Not only did your company lose enough money to have to cut jobs, but the unseen cost of these employees that the company invested in. Onboarding, training, development and more. All of these cost need to be added to the over all loss to the company. If you are taking ownership over making a bad decision that cost the company so much money that you had to let go of skilled labor. Then take full ownership of the decisions and pay full restitution to the company. The loss of skilled labor is far more tragic than cutting your losses by laying off a few. It's the unseen losses. 1. The unseen cost of Onboarding, training and development. 2. The unseen damage of sending a message to everyone in your company that this organization is financially unstable and cannot reallocate it's staff in difficult time. Which will cause the employees to start to job search. Whice decreases productivity. Lowering the quality of work and services. 3. Creating a hostile work environment. But you kept your job.
I have seen CEO have to fire people they did not want to. Do you know what they did? They talked to friends and other companies to try and find them work, they helped them with there CVs and interview prep. Gave letters of recommendation and asks there bosses and colleagues if they would be willing to write character references. If you are truly that upset you would have helped them and even posted about how amazing they are on LinkedIn to find them new work.
I'm not an overly critical person, but this one hasn't won me. I read from you lot of "I, me" and you didn't tag any of your formal employees in this post for all of us to see how would they react. Wondering, what's their point of view? I hoped to find a final, valuable conclusion in the end because indeed it sucks to fire workers... But I haven't learned any relevant detail about your work environment. About WHY did YOU made your decision. What current situation led you to take action? With those details I'd understand deeply your sadness. You can be vulnarable, but this post was all about you and your sorrow for yourself.
Never commented on a LinkedIn post in my life but this is one of the more troubling things I’ve seen lately. “Had to ruin a few lives today, but don’t forget how sad I am”.
You don’t love your employees. You made a mistake, they are paying for it so you can still turn a profit. I can think of a lower moment, it’s when your boss lays you off because he made a mistake, then posts a pic on social media for clout and to make himself feel better about it. However bad you feel about it, it’s not enough.
I just saw a post today on LinkedIn about the Nintendo CEO stating he cut his salary in half so he didn’t have to lay off his employees. It was admirable.
Saw this on the news, and came for the comments. LOL 🍿🍿🍿🍿
This post is pathetic.
Global Talent Management Leader | Advocate for Diversity and Inclusion |
1yThe Post and the replies you give are all about you, how YOU feel laying people off, how hard it is for YOU the CEO because YOU had to... This is narcissism and a lack of empathy, you think that uploading a picture crying shows you in a vulnerable spot, but that is not true and you know it. Why don't you use your reach to at least recommend these people to new employers? to share their resumes? to help them?