Hello, everybody, thank you so much for joining me. This is Michele Heyward from positive hire. And I’m so excited because first I want to kick this off by saying, Happy New Year Happy 2023 I can’t believe it feels like we still stuck in like the warp of 2020. But we’re gonna talk about that. Because this year, I’m kicking it off with something new and different. Y’all know, I like to I like to change it up. I like to, you know, sort of like my hair. Yeah, like, Who is this just straight hair when seeing her since 2014. I’m back. Not really a blowout. But I have. I have a co host. Here with me, Melissa Amber’s, who is the CEO and founder of strategic blueprint consulting, LLC, she wanted my people. So she is a guru extraordinaire, and project management with over 20 years of experience. And so she focuses in operations for communications and operations for manufacturing company. And y’all know, I’m an engineer, I’ve worked in manufacturing. And you trying to talk to us, Oh, you gotta be a good. So Melissa is over in Texas, you know, the dirty talk to the dirty I’m in South Carolina. That’s how we do. Patients, specifically in manufacturing facilities. And some of this can translate to other industries. But that’s where we’re going. That’s our zone. So you know, the industries we’ve worked in. But Melissa, can you tell everybody more about you? Because I know and love you. But I think my viewers, and listeners would love to want to know more about you as well.

Yes, I can go to the dirty as she puts it. I am Melissa Amber’s. I am in Houston, Texas. And I am the owner, founder of strategic blueprint consulting, as Michelle said, and we have been rated as one of the top emerging change management companies in 2022. And we work with, you know, industries and manufacturing, supply chain with operations and communications. And, you know, Michelle and I, you know, we ran across each other on social media, and we’re, we were in some groups together. And from there, just seeing what each other doing and kicking it off. So we are the process queens, I’m claiming the title.

I love it. I love it. We have somebody out in Oakland, California, were over in Oakland, and they’re saying, I’m gonna need y’all to clean up some of that dirty. We have environmental guidelines in California. Look.
What was your masterpiece? All right.

So so we’re gonna work on that. Right, right. We’re going to be talking about communications and layoffs. And we’re going to be coming to the bay because we’re gonna be talking a bit about Twitter, Twitter, and Lyft. And it communicates she owns. So if you want to talk about clean up, I need you to go to the valley and you know, started Twitter. Okay. So, now, you’ll see why I got with Melissa, because we have fun talking, you know, it is very important. So I know I recently did a post on LinkedIn a few hours ago, about being somebody that has been laid off and understanding the importance of how to communicate with employees during a layoff. And I think it’s really important that we have these conversations about who’s doing it right, who’s doing it better than others, and where there’s areas for improvement. So, Melissa, I’m gonna turn it over to you to get the conversation started. about layoffs and communications because this is truly your land. I’m trying to learn like how do I need to say that what I need to know begin?

Well, you know, with layoffs and communication, you know, so many organizations, they are just stuck in that mindset of, it’s our company, we’re the boss, we’re, you know, in control, we’re, you know, doing all of these things. So, you know, all of those things, check the boxes, we all have our terms for it, but with communications it it pretty much boils down to the lack of respect, even though I may be an employee of your organization and if you are doing a lot If I think because I am an employee, I’ve invested my time to work at this organization, that I still should have some type of respect of what’s coming. And sometimes, you know, depending on the situation, sometimes there’s not a lot of advance notice that they may give you, but they can definitely give you some type of notice. And, you know, sometimes companies will offer some extra, you know, assistance that, you know, if we’re laying you off, we’ll do our best put our HR staff on to help you with finding another job, make sure you have letters of recommendation, and all of those things to help you in your journey to finding, you know, some employment, but some competence is like they just see you later. And that’s the unfortunate part that we have with a lot of these companies. And this is why a lot of candidates now or shifting the way they’re looking for employment. Because it Yes, I need a job. Yes, I am applying to your organization. But I’m looking for something different. It’s just like, if you go buy a car, and you have a specific model, and you just was fed up with it, the maintenance, the customer service, the marketing, everything about it just was not right. You were not able to get resolutions, you kept having issues. So what are you going to do, you’re not going to deal with that brand anymore, you’re gonna go to a different brand. It’s no different with these companies. They’re so large now that the decision makers are so high up, they don’t see and really tune in to what’s going on. In these other lower level departments where they are laying off these employees. Yes, they know layoffs are happening. Yes, they know what percentage or a number that’s going to be laid off it, they might even know it all the way down to exactly what departments are losing how many employees, but they don’t have that process in place, they don’t have a communication framework in place to you know, have that process where they can follow that process. So I think that’s where a lot of those things are falling off. And that is not being communicated effectively. And employees are feeling a certain type of way, and they’re just simply fed up. And that’s why it’s a constant rotating door through a lot of these organizations, right now they can’t find the right candidate. And when they think they have found the right candidate, it’s not because they were vanity hiring, they wanted the pretty paper the pretty degrees, but no experience or either minimal experience. And they bring these people in and paying them, you know, if not top dollar or a nice salary. And they’re they don’t know how to execute. They come in to bare minimum and just sit and twiddle their thumbs. So, but you know, I could go on and on and on about, you know, this, Michelle, so it’s just, you know, the organization’s have to change the way that they are treating employees.

I absolutely agree. I’m just thinking, I was thinking about when I got laid off. And so coming out of that company, I’d been there for 12 years. And when I got the call, it wasn’t actually from my like reporting manager for my last role, because we were structured a bit different on how we did project organization. I got it from my senior director. And that senior director, I probably had worked under in his department for probably five years easy. It was five years, he had never communicated with me directly. Wow. Oh, and so when he called and left me a message, he said, Hey, you can call me back or HR, I called HR back, the HR rep. I talked to her more in my time with the organization that I had never spoken to him. And so when I called her she said, Why did you call me? So why would I call him he? I’ve never spoken to him? The entire 12 years, I worked for the company, or the five years that I’ve reported to him. And so I think if you’re going to do one on one calls, I think it’s important to do one on one calls with your employees. But who’s the person to do those one on one calls? Is it somebody they’ve never had a relationship with they’ve never had contact with. And sometimes you have more front facing, maybe junior level people, you’re like, hey, they really shouldn’t be doing the calls. And maybe you need to be doing dual calls with the HR person and a manager. So that employee knows that like, yeah, it takes a larger bandwidth it does. But remember, you did not put in the work beforehand. And if you didn’t structure and do those communications beforehand, you really have to think about what what you now going to have to do is when you put it off the unit study for the task So it is test day, you have to show what you have and what you’re given. And they they don’t go about doing that very, very well. And I think that just depends on certain departments, the previous department, I’d have been in, that senior director had interviewed me, I stayed in touch, he did all hands call with his his teams. So you can report in on what you’re working on on a project. So even though I work remotely, I didn’t work in an office, I worked on a construction site. So I may only meet or work directly with three or four people in my, in my, in my department for three or four years, and I switched roles, and I’m working with a different three or four people. And then another three or four years, I’m switching it, but it’s 300 people in that department, I’ve worked with 12. And we’re all you know, a good bit of us a remote. And I think people, organizations are struggling right now with remote work. Number one, you didn’t know how to do communications when your employees were in the office, and you want them to come back because you still lacked skill set on how to communicate. And I did a talk, I was on a panel in December. And I was like you don’t know how to manage in the office, which is why you’re failing outside of the office. So you need to go back and train I think coming in organizations need to bring people in to help them understand how to do better communications, as you said, overall, because they fail at communications, they don’t know how to build relationships. And the last thing I will say is when organizations see or, or potential candidates or talent, see how you lay off and what the response is from those employees. It makes a huge impact. And I something I mentioned on a panel I was on last week was people like hey, we’re having difficulty hiring people because we wanted to come back and officers hybrid. So first of all, we talk about you and they started laughing like no, we really talk about you. We share with your interviewing processes, we share how bad your job postings are, we share how horrible it is to work there. It is not because your salary is too low. It is because right now where we are in technology and in social media, and in online communities, we are sharing these things that oftentimes you don’t see. And so it is negatively impacting you. And you don’t know you need to be changing what’s going on inside your organization because you’re still perceiving it as 1999 and not 2023. And, and the organization’s aren’t controlling the narrative as they were in 99 as to what they show out in social because we’re talking about it. And I think it’s important that you communicate communication can help change that.

So I want us to turn back to, to some some people we’ve talked about the negative side and some of what organizations can do different I want to I want to talk about somebody I bought up organization I bought up on the West Coast. And then we’re going to talk about another organization on the West Coast. The one it didn’t do some things well with layoffs. Twitter. So let me let’s talk about Twitter. We’re gonna try to keep this succinct and down like six, seven minutes. Let’s talk about Twitter for a minute. What are your thoughts on Twitter’s layoffs?

First off, I mean, you rent it when a new management comes in or owner come in. Everyone else is gonna be some changes, things are gonna happen. He wants to come in and rattle the cages and hey, here I am inside come in want to beat the chance. Hey, hear me roar. But with Twitter. I think it was just a tidal wave. It was It wasn’t No, I don’t think it was even Hey, hear me roar. It was just like, you know, it just came in and all of these things started happening. And then it’s like the tidal wave happened. It’s like, oh, wait, we may have screwed up and leave it. Hey, do you want to come back? Let’s offer you a job, then it was like, You’re not going away? Hey, do you want to come back want to offer your job? So it was it was no thought process? It showed there was absolutely no thought process. And everyone was like, you know, we say we dog paddling. We’re just barely above the water. It’s like so many was doing that and just trying to breathe and stay afloat. It was like, let’s just do it. Let’s just do it. Nobody sat down and said, okay, hold on. Let’s put together a process. Let’s figure out how are we going to do this?

Look at the people from seniority to, you know, less than six months. How are we going to do this if it’s going to be severance for the long term employees. What does that include? How are we going to do that is a percentage base is it lump sum? What is that gonna? What’s gonna happen? And that was a huge not only, I think mistake with Twitter, but it also gave the employees is a completely different mindset, whether they stayed there came back or they went somewhere else, that now they have their defenses up on the lack of respect, the lack of just really given me the treat me like a human. That’s where a lot of people forget that we are all human, we have families, we have cardinals, we have house notes, we have, you know, groceries, all of these different things that we have to take care of. And I had no warning, you just came in and like wiped me out, like, you know, this huge flood that just came in no warning at all, even though I may try to run from it, and stay afloat and do what I had to do, I still got caught in that flood and was washed out. And I think that, you know, shows how organizations should really, you know, think about what you’re doing before you do it, even though you may want to change some things because they haven’t been right, or whatever the case may be, get a process in place. And part of that is the communication process. How are you going to communicate this to all of these individuals? Not, you know, company, employees, individuals, these humans, these people? How are you going to communicate this to them. And again, you know, of course, looking at seniority and all these different things. But having that communication and plan can make a huge difference. And it wouldn’t have been in the news, the way they would have been in news, it would have been like any other company, hey, Twitter had a laugh. But the way that he did, it just gave it so much negative impact, that people started falling off the platform. You know, I don’t know what the number is now, because so many people just started dropping, some came back, but people just started dropping, because even though they didn’t work at Twitter, simply because of the way he did. So it didn’t just affect internally. And that’s what organizations don’t realize, what you do internally affects external, and your customers, because they are watching, especially a company like Twitter, they are watching, they’re looking, they’re seeing what’s happening. And then with the name of Elon Musk, who doesn’t know that name, right?

You know, let’s see what he’s going to do. So they’re looking at all of this. And, um, I don’t know if it happened or not. But I wouldn’t be surprised if this actually started affecting, you know, Tesla, just because of him being a part of both of these organizations, that people are powerful when they start standing together, and they start seeing things. They are powerful. And then of course, they went to news that okay, he lost? Was it 200 billion? I’m like, wait, what? Is that a real number? Just say that, right? You know, for you to lose that type of money. And I’m sure it’s a lot of the things factors into that. But I’m treating people like like a human coming up with a communication playing, being transparent, letting people know giving them a warning, not just send out a mass email, Hey, you’re done today? How rude. You know, you know, how dare you just send me an email to say I’m done. So I think that was a huge mistake on how that was handled. And this message could still go to any other organization. How are you handling your layoffs? Even if it’s a restructuring, how are you handling that, because even though you may just be restructuring and putting someone in different position, they’re still they still are person, they still have feelings as motions with that, especially someone that’s been that long term, and it could be an emotion. And it could be okay, I’ve been here 30 years. And now you want to put me in a position where I want to be here like five years ago, you know, it’s like I put the promotion on track. So is really looking at that and coming up with that plan. And I always say a lot of people get a third party to come in and help you with that plan. Because a lot of your internal employees are biased, because they’re there. They know what they want to have. They want it to run. So they’re going to kind of pull more to one side than the other, but a third party that can come in and handle that for you and work with your internal team. They’re going to give you the exact what it is. These are the recommendations and how you know, things can happen and what the return of that is. You won’t end up with these type of problems.

Absolutely. I want to go into a couple of things you said, bringing in a third party, I think does a few things. We don’t always see the gaps in our own processes and procedures or we don’t see them. We don’t think they’re a major issue. And so, Twitter like a lot of companies during the pandemic Like, hey, you can work from anywhere. Because it’s important when you have certain policies like that. practices like that, let’s call it a practice and your policies don’t align to those practices. How do you get them in alignment to do a layoff? Right? Or to do an announcement and, and I, and I think it’s really important, if we go back and look at a large beverage company, I won’t call the name, they’ve done a lot of restructuring over the last, let’s say, 23 years, we just gonna start from 2000. The 992 1000 to 2020. Yeah, we will do is let their employees know we’re doing a restructure. That really helps the employee kind of decide like you said, we have 30 years and do I want our young officer asking questions going home, like what our finances my take early retirement? You know what I’ve been wanting to leave here anyway. And let me see if I might be able to get a severance package, take a few months off. And then there’s going to be those people. I want to say I love what I do here, or I don’t want to leave because everybody else is trash. But how did you communicate in a lot of organizations take the standpoint, oh, people are going to take data? And they’re going to take files, guess what? If they were going to do it on the way out, they were.

They’ve been told there’s a thief as a thief, they don’t become a thief, when you announce something they’ve been doing all the time. And so organizations get more feels fearful or retaliation, trust me, already set up the back code, the bad code, as they’ve been working it over time, not all at once. And I think is really, really important to say that if you have seemingly for the vast majority of your employees treated them, well, you don’t, you probably won’t get up, retaliate. Right? And that goes to when organizations do this, how do they know they have a bad culture? How do they know they really treated those their people? Because they and some people like well, I freaked him out. When he got laid off. They locked him out of his cell phone. So he couldn’t, somebody was like, hey, I need to get something. He was like, I can’t send you anything. Everything’s just been locked out. You got to go to it was an apple. So they were trying to transmit information. He was like, Well, that’s it, that’s you have to email me at my personal email. They had practice where they couldn’t share certain company information on private, personal email. So literally, he just had, they just had products, right physical products, they can’t even use because an employee got laid off. It was just very, very bizarre. And you’re spending $1,000 on iPhone, let’s say maybe $500. And it’s depreciate. But now you got to scrap everything off of it, and go back to the factory settings and everything. And so you lose that information. And so the other part of that, that something that you brought up was the fact that impact on customers, when people leave is a transfer of knowledge that needs to be shared transfer of expertise that you can’t share. But why did you do certain things and having that documentation, sometimes on software side, people do very well with documentation. Some software developers like I hate documentation. So there’s, there ain’t no documentation. You just walk in, like, what is this? And so I think it’s really important that if you’re going to do a layoff, you understand what the documentation what the processes are, are they well documented. I remember manufacturing, the company I got hired for the inside sales engineer. And they were moving manufacturing from Wisconsin to North Carolina, and they were laying off everybody in his manufacturing facility is set for the planner. The planner gets to North Carolina facility, what it done it was constantly taken all the manuals, physical manuals on how to build out these piece of equipment. This is this is like Oh, for this early 2000s. They got there. I guess what employees had done, they pulled out pages out of the manual, you let everybody go, you didn’t give us a set that pull it out pages out of the manual. The planner saved that organism the planet couldn’t do her job because she had to sit on the plant floor teaching people in North Carolina, how to manufacture stuff and it was a it was a very this particular product depending on the serial number, every letter and numbering the serial number told you what component went in it. It was a 16 Now I love this. I’ve married it out on how they did this. But she spent more of her time and so it was like this. They were it was a new purchase. Right this organ larger manufacturing company had bought this smaller mom and pop in a in a rural part of Wisconsin. sin that had been there for 40 years. And they still did retaliation for whatever reason. And the only saving grace was one employee, and but how do you? How do you how even then what could they have done better for those employees? Because they did give them, I think, a decent severance, but maybe they didn’t have, you know, a lot of job options locally. So you also think about what is the overall impact depending on the locations of where you’re closing? And, and it was, it was very, very different type of deal. So I keep thinking about different layoffs where I’ve come in as a new employee, where I’ve been an employee let go, and then how did it impact the new employees that have taken up work? And then how are you doing now you’re delayed with sharing, sharing the, with your products, your manufacturing is now delayed, because you only have one person. So you, I think organizations really do need to understand the overall impact is like, Oh, we’re gonna cut it out. And the people that work there, they’ll just figure it out. Guess what happens? Now, you want to quit, because you’re picking up the slack. They don’t want to compensate you for anything your work if your salary your working hours, so you just took took a pay cut, because you do a two to three additional jobs. And so organizations really need to take into account when they make those cuts. And I think what on on the aspect of Twitter, it is a very open public type of sharing organization. And so employees like Yep, got locked out in the day, I have not no longer to know if you’re hiring, this is what I did, or but what was really good, I would say, on employees that were laid off. When we look at socialist, hey, I really enjoyed working with, with Melissa and Giselle and Stephanie. And you these five years, we built one, two, and three to help customers a, b and c, right. And the impact they made on me as a person. And the impact we made for our our customers. And seeing that makes you know, you have culture in that organization, or subcultures, as I call it, that really worked well. And they were computed communicating outwardly. Do that internal to your organization, right? And say, Hey, I know we’re getting laid off and you’re going into your slack. You’re going into your teams, and you’re tagging your soon to be former coworkers, and saying these things to them. And I think it’s really important to also get an opportunity for employees to say goodbye to each other, even if they’re remote. And to and I was doing that on my way out. I was doing phone calls to people like, Hey, I’m getting laid off. I’m getting like, oh, there’s a hey, here’s my personal cell phone number, stay in touch. You don’t always have to lay off. And I think it’s really important that you do that and that sometimes it’s taken away. So let’s talk about who did well, who has done a good job with layoffs back on the West Coast. Let’s let’s go to the beginning of the pancetta, there was a company that did well with layoffs. Who was that? Who do you think that was? I won’t say Well, I’ll say they did better. They did better. Who who did better? I will say Airbnb. I will say Airbnb did a better job with and which and I did not see a lot of negativity about that. So to me that was say they did a good job in terms because when you people are real quick to talk about some bad there real quick to put the bad out there, but you’re not gonna put the good and but you’re not talking to me even with the culture that shows how you’ve been treating your employees. Right? That shows how even if you have not been treated them right and treat them like crap and just, you know, and they’re just like, let me just go get my chicken go home. You know, if they’re in that mentality, if you just you know, tidal wave them out. Yeah, nine times out of 10 You’re gonna have a batch of men that that’s going to do some sabotage. Because because they’re terminators, what you’re gonna do fine. That’s what you’re gonna do fine. So, you know, but if you treat people with respect, it’s helpful because I mean, in any company, you’re gonna have some bad apples, you know, that’s just what it is. But if you do your best to treat people, right, they’re gonna have your happier they’re gonna have your back and like, not like to make my job bad. So it’s treating people you know the right way with Airbnb, you know, with them. They have to do and copyright that has that put the package together to help them find jobs and stuff like that.

So with that, I mean, they are. That speaks volumes that shows not only that they respect their employees, but they know, we are in a we’re in a place where do I want groceries? Do I want gasoline, we’re gonna sit in the house over the weekend on Netflix it, you know, what we’re gonna do is, you know, everybody’s in that place and for them to put out there. So okay, let us do what we can to help you find some employment. So you’re not by yourself, or you don’t feel alone. Having a company to do that for you. I mean, that just speaks volumes. I mean, who does that? Right. Um, we could probably count on one hand of companies that do that. And you might say, half a fingers left over, actually, you know, but I think shift to that is, you know, being part of the change in that culture, investing the time and money to make the change. Yes, you may be, you know, spending some money now, but look at the return you’re gonna get, not only only, but the employees, they’re gonna start producing more productivity, less customer complaints, because if you’re in a situation, the customers have nothing to complain about. So you’re gonna see that store trampling all throughout the organization. So I think part of that also was having a proper SOP in place, a digital SOP. And I know some want the hand where you can touch it and flip it fine. But you need to really have a digital and have two or three people that manage that. So if one of those people leave the comment on their own, or they’re laid off, or whatever, that somebody knows how to get in there and do what needs to be done, and that they’re updated on a regular basis. So you know, having that one person like you will speak enough or feeling overworked, because she’s trying to, you know, redo everything, remap all of these things. And, and on top of that training, everybody, that will be a huge help to have, you know, your SOP in place. A lot of companies write one SOP, they don’t look at it, no more, they don’t touch it. And just to say, Alright, check the box, we have an SOP. But it has to be looked at it has to be reviewed, it has to be updated. And that also speaks to their employee value proposition, which is, you know, kind of like your mission that is geared towards the candidate and not the consumer. And when you have that, that says who you are, what you are for what you’re all about. So when that candidate is looking for employment, they’re going to say, Okay, this is somewhere I want to be because your benefits would be in there. Your any type of perks, that you have team building projects, and whatever position or department it is, have some extra information written about that department. So they know who will I be working with? Because candidates are looking at who am I going to be with? Do I Do I have to sit next to somebody to work with somebody that I’m gonna have to carry Advil in my purse every single day? Can I go home without looking at the kids and just give me a minute? I mean, sure, give me a minute. Don’t talk to me right now. You want to go home welcoming, you want to go home and you know, think play with the kids talk to the husband, you know, just I’m not saying be jolly, but you know, be in a space where you can, you can operate. But when you’re in a space where you got to, you know, hold on, give me a minute, I’ll go park down the street at the park, have someone sit in their car until you can decompress before you go home, you don’t want to work in a place like that. So I think you know, changing the culture, putting together a really good EVP and your SOPs that that’s going to help people you know, when they’re looking for these jobs and when they’re doing things so I think that’s something a lot of look at.

Absolutely, I absolutely agree. They they need to I want to start back with the great company. I’ll say Airbnb, I won’t say a great company but what they did that was different, like you said, is helping employees get jobs so they switched their talent acquisition people who were in trying to recruit people to that company. They may help they were having them help those that were saying right because sometimes it goes it should be we’re like oh, but they help them find the employees getting let go help them find jobs. Airbnb also built its own talent marketplace where it said hey, these are our employees were letting go because organization let’s be let’s be honest, there was like when you were let go for air and became Airbnb, you must not be that good. That’s not necessarily so you They have to make a decision. So you know, oftentimes Like, who do we let go is? The last one is the first one out? And sometimes exactly what what criteria are they using. So it’s not as though the person you got to think about, they were there. So they have to be talented. And they bring to your organization. And so them openly, the organization itself, building out a talent marketplace speaks volumes, what we’ve seen often is employees that were impacted by the layoffs, creating a Google form, and an outward facing list to four other cons like, Hey, this is us over at peloton that were let go or another organization that is run by a former employee, not by the organization. That’s what we’re seeing most times. And it’s important to understand that communicates that translates differently to talent, if future employees are candidates to about your organization, and how do you help the employees that that are no longer with the organization due to a layoff, or RIF reduction in force, whatever you’re calling it, and you aren’t thinking about as excommunication. But it really, really is. And and you have to take into account what it was like? Well, well, we did one, two or three, nobody knows that. We don’t know, offer resume services, LinkedIn profiles, bonuses, what are you doing to communicate also very clearly, to them. Remember, just getting a third party like, Hey, you can get feedback about the company via third party. And sometimes employees aren’t going to do like I was only one laid off, I’m not about to tell y’all how bad it was there, I’m not going to respond, but I will go to glass door. Or I will talk about it in private slack communities and Facebook, whatever. And so really understanding also, how do we get that feedback from from employees on the way out, but also while they were there, as part of our communications and I value we bring to organizations so that we know where to improve?

while they’re here. And, and are engaged in the company culture, but also in a way out, because all of it shows our company culture. Right, ESPYS. That’s the whole s, that’s your space. What I will say from our aspect is looking and doing an assessment on organizations practices, policies and procedures to see where they need to have SOPs, or where each department or team has different SOP. What’s the organization’s take on it? Or why is there’s different? Does it need to be different? This manufacturing? Does operations need to be different from it? Different rates, different engineering different from sales? Like Well, no, everybody’s supposed to be under the same thing. So you haven’t been monitoring how they come up with their processes for layer. So what? So what, and I think it’s really important to get to get back to the basics of creating SOPs, and it may change, right? You we had a pandemic, and it was like, how do we stay safe in a manufacturing facility. So you had to change how high your production floor is, how many people can be there, who could how many people could be on break, how many people will be in a break room. If you have to space out chairs, tables and chairs. So you had to take out tables and chair, but you only have so many maintenance people in the room and take out tables. And so you’ve shown that you can do it. But you do it in a way that is communicated clearly through the organization. And what does that look like, really has to be tied on has to be close and for organizations. The last thing I want to say is let’s talk about what they can do what they can do to make it better for employees. And we’re going to share something we’ll tell you, I think Melissa has a QR code where you can get we just put together a quick sheet of some action actionable steps you can take to really share organizations can take to improve their communication. So what can organizations do? So that communication especially for layoffs is much better?

One of the things that they can do is put together a real smart like simple communication framework because I think keeping it really simple and not, you know, complex and just doing doing the most, you know, unnecessarily so the first thing is been accessible, and that’s communicating clearly and rec with your employees and just really being transparent being available for questions and really open to answering those questions and listening to their concerns. And not just this is the way it is you know be able to To give them an answer, and even if you don’t know the answer, you know, let them know, give me a minute, let me find out or redirect them to, you know, the person that could probably answer that question for them. The next thing is actionable. And that’s inspiring others to take action. And that can be, you know, they’re their coworkers or somebody else within the organization is, you know, what action can they take to make this transition easier? You know, do they need help with certain things, and not everybody, you know, coming up, and, oh, I’m so sorry. Or Oh, I hate that they laid you off, that’s not helping. That’s not actually that’s not really showing your carry, especially if you’re a person that really been, you know, deal with that person. But Ashman says how can we help and sincerely mean that in a foot to come from the organization, for example, Airbnb, for the car from the organization, that’s a really good actionable type of communication that they did with their employees credible, focusing on the communication skills necessary to build trust, and credibility. So when you’re looking at, you know, creating that, you know, credibility and everything, you want to do all of those, those different things, you know, for the employees, you know, making sure that they’re there, that they are there, and they understand everything that needs to be done. And listening before you speak, one of those things is that a lot of managers and supervisors, because we all go in with our gotta wear armor weeks, we suit up, we got our armor on, we’re ready for battle, take off the armor, and just be open and just say, okay, you know, let’s talk, let them come in and have a conversation without being tense, and you’re tight shouldered, and all of that, relax, and just have a conversation, you got to remember, these press was these people just laid off there, you know, some of them are going to be more upset than others, some are in their hand trying to figure out, how am I going to, you know, pay my bills, even if they have one or two months saved up, they wanted too much is gonna come by flat like that, what are we going to do?

So it’s, you know, going through all of their savings and everything, just trying to make sure that, you know, they are available, and that, you know, they can go through, you know, some of these things, um, the information overload, you, we, we tend to go in, and we just start talking and just given all of this information, and it’s too much, give the highlights the necessary things of what you need to do, who to contact, where to go, what to do, and all of the other information that they may or may not need, hand that to him in a pamphlet or handout or something like that. So, um, I think it’s one more that I missed one. Growing down, one more. Okay, yeah. So then yeah, on this 160 7% of employees increase productivity when communication is clear. And to the point. And, like, we were saying, you know, throughout this entire conversation is being clear get to the point and not give a lot of extra be open to the conversation listening at, let them ask the question, giving them answers, helping them to find out the answers that they need, if you don’t know. So really just being available it it makes a difference, it really does make a difference. Because even though you may have laid off a person, guess what if they had to go on, you know Glassdoor indeed or any of the other sites or even, you know, social media, they’re gonna say, you know, hey, this was a good company, they did XYZ, they really looked out for me, um, you know, they they tried to help me to do you know, this. So, be open to the process, be willing to do you know, some of those things that that is needed. And before you know it, you know, you’re gonna have the opportunity to, to, to work with that employee, you’re gonna have be able to find the right candidates because they had you have a good or no bad, even if somebody was laid off, and they can’t, because you never know who knows if somebody was laid off of that company, and I decided I want to apply and I may call my work for such and such. Yeah, they was a good company, they did XYZ, but if they treated her wrong, and just really didn’t care, trust me, she’s gonna say it and not work for you, even though you’re like, oh, we have to get that person over here, because I know they could do XYZ they have the experience all of this, they’re not going to come want to come and work for your company, because of the reason. So really, you know, think about, you know, investing the time to have a clear communication, review all of your current communication process that you may have in place right now, review them, I mean in detail. And it really should be handled by third party, an unbiased party. So you can get the the true assessment that you need. And not only that, it gives the opportunity for that person to come in and talk internally to a variety of people throughout the organization to get different feedback, and understand what’s happening throughout the organization. So you can have a true picture as a decision maker.

Absolutely love it, I want to add in a couple points here, we, in the actual PDF, it talks about body language, and people will sit on a call at people express that they when they laid me off, they didn’t even bother turning on that cameras, I think it’s really important that you turn on your camera, you show up dressed to like, Oh, I just rolled in from my job is not the look you want to have. showing empathy for the employee, but also showing support in your appearance and not being on your cell phone on another thing. And really just being in a quiet space, if you can, in order to do these, if it’s virtual, or if it’s in the office to do these communications, because that sets a completely different tone. When you’re laying people off virtually and you do not turn on your cameras, it is it is very disheartening, because there is no, there is no human to human. And it’s really important to have that human to human in a very stressful point in this in this employee’s life, it is very, very important to do that. So I highly encourage you to do that. If it’s over the phone, the same thing. You aren’t lying in bed, you aren’t like outside, maybe outside of your kids soccer game where everybody’s waving at you want to talk, you know, you need to have some type of separation and barrier to be able to make these difficult calls. And maybe do it with yourself and somebody and one other person. Right. I was like, hey, Melissa, I’m calling this is your manager such and such. And then I also have Kimberly from HR on here, she’s going to give you like the next steps of what happens, right? And that way, you can split up the who says what on a call, and let’s let’s just talk about don’t do information overload. And you’re gonna get these 22 things like, hey, the first thing is, you know, I want to ensure this is your delegate personal email, it is great, you’re going to receive an email and in that email is going to have multiple steps in there. But pretty much it’ll be what is your severance package? How you can provide rate, our overall survey about your experience will come from this company. But we’ll provide that and how do you access your last pay stub? And how will you get your access your W two for 2022?

electronically. So that’s what’s in those five, though, if that’ll come in that email, just the final things. And then if you have questions, you can call me but I’m doing a lot of these outbound calls. Right now there’s an 800 number that’ll be in that email, if you have questions about your severance package. So you really want to keep it very concise about it’s going to come to you an email. And also you will receive in the mail three different pieces of information, which is a hard copy of your separation letter. You will also receive your severance package, hardcopy, and you’ll receive a paper survey feedback form that you can provide anonymously feedback about your experience with the organization, like keeping it very concise. I always is 138 Bubble questions make sure you have a number two pencil, like don’t do that just keep it very high. Like when are they going to see their last paycheck? Is it going to still be direct deposit? Is it going to be paper check, and what happens to their 401 K their health care benefits going to end at the end of the month on the last day which is the 30/31 so if you need to get things scheduled, you’ll get information about health care whether it’s Cobra, you want to keep liking this healthcare last paycheck, their their retirement plan, and then what additional support you have for them as far as like resume writing, interview skills, job hunting skills, things like that. And then like you like oh, and then it will also be information about how to return your company equipment. Like that could be last that’s the last thing on their mind is how they can return your ish and but you still say how to how they’re going to receive that information. And how do they get back in contact with organization if they have questions. And sometimes we forget those things, but keep it condensed to maybe five things that most, but they need, they want to know where their money at period. And and yeah, because because that’s really the driver did they still have to take care of themselves and their families or in house, household or household, another house? So I think it’s really important to do that as well. Um, so I was I was I just wanted to make sure we talked about that if Yeah, if you can. If you can, I would say just being concise, concise is very, very important. And drafting it out a few times as to what needs to be in there and clickable links and next steps. And so the email itself can be concise too. And they just go to the links that walks them step by step. So test everything out before you send it out, as well know whether it works in Chrome so far. He some people are still on not Internet Explorer, whatever they call it,

I think oh, shoot, I forgot the name. Yes, not Internet Explorer anymore.
No way. But if it ducked up, go see monkeys check 10 different. Yeah, all them because you don’t know what your people going to use. And just so you know, it works. And you tell my Hey, we know it works in Safari, Chrome. And IE, if you’re using something else, just let them know, you don’t know if they’re gonna be able to access it. But these are the three, three that you know it works. So just really, really help them make it as less stressful as possible. And the last thing I will say is definitely we’ll drop our email addresses. If you want a copy of this, or Melissa, I’ll let you add that. I just want to say one other thing is not easy on either side. But showing up and being empathetic is going to be very important during this time. If you’ve never been laid off, you’d never have parents being laid off. It is very important in that and I was just talking to someone today about this is that when you go through whether you’re an HR side or not the management side and you’re doing the calls for layoffs, look at the demographics of who you’re laying off. Some people will notice some patterns and who they lay off. And others of you won’t won’t see patterns, which is good, but some of you will see edge okay is edge edge. Okay. It’s that edge. It’s on the edge. All right. But some of you will see layoffs when and that’s why I’ve been asking questions. I’ve been trying to get discussions around equitable layoffs.

Twitter’s new, we got to worry about it being equitable, it was just a two Sami tsunami, a tsunami, um, as as Giselle had put in, in the comments, and it was just everywhere all at once overpowering the employees as well as the users. So I think that’s important as well that you simplify it. You humanize it, I think a lot of the human has been taken out of out of layoffs and reduction in force. And you have to go back to to that. When you do it, it is a improvement in employee experience on their way out. And it really has to change so communication not only verbally, but also it via email, any any thing that you sent out, also I want to say I know what it was bonuses if they’re like, Hey, you’re into your bonus will still hit your account in February. And so you want to make sure they know things like that. Anything that may have to do with their finances, some people took loans out against their 401 K to buy homes, like hey, that’s gonna be due now. You’re no longer with the company. So it’s like hey, so what are some, some big major impacts your employees may have, you probably want to outline not necessarily in that conversation but in an email or paper snail mail information that you want to send out. So they are prepared as best as possible for the changes that are going to happen from the loss of a job. So I will say that much. Okay. And I we’re in our last few minutes so Melissa, any last thoughts? I know some people want to get a copy of what what we shared on as far as Tips How can he be
sure apologize on demand? Put the QR code on that infographic. So in the comments where you are, drop your email address, and we’ll be sure to get the PDF over to you. Or either DM one of us on LinkedIn. And we’ll get it to you. That way, if that’d be better than that way, we’ll just sent it to you in the in the message on LinkedIn. But you know, to, you know, kind of in this is, you know, we, it’s kind of like a cycle, you know, check on your people, make sure that they’re okay, don’t just be the decision maker sitting up top and not really understanding, sincerely go into these departments see what’s going on when there’s layoffs, talk to your people treat them like humans, and just, you know, be human about it and not, you know, so called with everything. So, you know, other than that, we’ve kind of hit a lot of points on the communication, where we need to be LPS frameworks, laying off and just being open and transparent. I think if you remember that being open and transparent, everything else will probably fall into play.

Yeah, I agree. humanized the entire process. So everybody, thank you so much for joining us. We will be back in two weeks, two weeks, we’ll be back on the 24th of January. I like to jump to July, because I’m ready for it. Here, what can you
please work through the quarter?

I want you know, I’m back to the future. I got the flux capacitor repaired and I can go back to the future. I’m just saying. Yeah, I guess I guess I can work through the quarter sheet up all the way to July. Please excuse her.
What he’s saying is I should have started suck at least June. But that’s my birthday. But I went over, maybe I would just skip in a year getting older, but still being as beautiful and fabulous. I don’t know. But to all over that.

I’d be what I can when I can
appreciate that. Okay, open and transparency.

So this is a new series on communication, which is really imperative in every organization, but we’re specifically talking about it for manufacturing organizations, even though we talked about tech because y’all were doing some wild stuff over there. Y’all might want to take some notes from some manufacturer. How to do stuff a little bit better. I’m just saying a little a lot of Yeah, so All right. All right, everybody. We will see you in two weeks. You want to mark your calendar for 6pm. Eastern time. 5pm Central, and Giselle, you on the wrong coast is 3pm. Pacific. I ready? Oh, I can throw we have a couple minutes. Let me see. More of a movie. That is Stephanie. That is Stephanie. Not Stephanie Mills with Stephanie Cole. She is out of Harlem. So she was like, yeah, so Stephanie is very much a creative. She was like I can see this right now. The missing pages last employee standing. Let me tell you, let me tell me, let me tell you real quick, what happened was one of my teammates, we were in Asheville, North Carolina in a sales center.

But we had manufacturing floor connected to the building. Like literally it was the next wall. We had cubicles. The walls that said to the to my right, was where manufacturing happened. Well, Raleigh was where this particular manufacturing facility was just laid out relocated. She was a planner from Wisconsin and to Raleigh, one of my teammates went to Raleigh, and he was like y’all to research she not respond to emails, she’s on a manufacturing floor, asking answering questions about how to build it, because they’re missing pages, just like so don’t get upset that she not responded. She not responded because she got to be on the floor to teach her how to make the audits we take. So well, so we get my bonuses, our sales commission, because she actually got to teach them how to make it. I was like plus or plus a regular job. And so I think it’s really important that it and I still have these conversations, but people still don’t realize we’re in the middle of a pandemic. Continue to give people grace because you really don’t know what’s going on in their household. You don’t notice like what I had COVID back in 2021. They can have long COVID They have issues with a kidneys and lungs, their heart somebody in their family could be having issues and they are now a caregiver were in a person’s 30 or 40 and they weren’t expected to be a caregiver this Early with a partner or a family member or somebody in their community. So continue to get people great. Go ahead, go ahead and write the people grace not only dealing with, you know, Colton, you know, the results from that, financially, people are having such a hard time right now. Because everything is going up, except the paychecks. So if people are just still struggling, of just trying to make ends meet, and majority of time, it’s not that somebody’s living out of their means. It’s just this economy just done. Again, there was no warning, it was like, here it is. And we like oh, shoot, wait, you know, but we have no trouble just glancing like, Hey, this is it. This is life. We got to adjust some stuff. And you know that grace comes from people in the realizations. Like, I didn’t have to struggle before. I didn’t have to you know, try to decide, you know, what I need to buy or how much I need to buy. I you know, if I want to go to the mall, no big deal. I go buy me a pair of shoes, but now it’s like, Oh, hold on, let me hold on to the shoe mine because I don’t know. So yeah, giving people grace because the emotion of going through all of this. Is this war on people.

Absolutely. Absolutely. So we want to have some communications about communications on the value and the worth of employees when but you’re not. It’s not showing up in the paycheck. So we’re gonna we’re gonna have those conversations too. So everybody, we will get real time but continue to give grace to those because there’s a lot going on in the world right now. siala two weeks. Bye, everybody.