"This prompted immediate and predictable backlash: both for the layoffs themselves and for the tone of the email. According to ProPerm.ru, the company is investigating to find the employee who leaked the email."
Lol them not expecting such a tone deaf email to get leaked really cements my suspicion that any idiot can find himself in the captain's chair.
I actually respect this email for honesty. Corpspeak gets really tiring after years upon years of hearing it. Here's the corpspeak version of the title: "Sharpening our focus on core principles". Or "Doubling down on X". Would you like to read that instead?
How about talking to the employees. How about managers having input on if arbitrary performance metrics were reflective of the value of their contributions? How about not shifting blame on a reduction in growth/ necessity to do layoffs on perf metrics? How about not asking the people you just fired to write you a “long letter” expressing their gratitude?
They certainly can. In this case, the message is coming from the top, but the message and the actions are literally disconnected every time a middle manager or team lead has to tell people about some foolishness coming from the top of the company. And when the person making the decision is also the communicator, they can still make meaningful rhetorical decisions such as whether to apologize for their inability to make a good enough decision, to compliment or threaten the existing employees, to attempt to reveal whether to make up for the actions taken in some way, and so on, in addition to less consequential decisions about tone that may affect different employees according to their communication preferences.
I recommend becoming willing to evaluate how bad decisions are communicated to the degree you evaluate good ones as the former exercise aids the latter.
Comments
"This prompted immediate and predictable backlash: both for the layoffs themselves and for the tone of the email. According to ProPerm.ru, the company is investigating to find the employee who leaked the email."
Lol them not expecting such a tone deaf email to get leaked really cements my suspicion that any idiot can find himself in the captain's chair.
I actually respect this email for honesty. Corpspeak gets really tiring after years upon years of hearing it. Here's the corpspeak version of the title: "Sharpening our focus on core principles". Or "Doubling down on X". Would you like to read that instead?
You don't see a third option they could've taken instead?
Assume you've decided to do larger scale layoffs. What would you prefer the announcement to look like?
That was my point, why should the layoff be assumed as a given? That was as much of a decision that someone made as the messaging around it.
What are you referring to? Keep in mind this thread is about how to write the email, given the action they took.
How about talking to the employees. How about managers having input on if arbitrary performance metrics were reflective of the value of their contributions? How about not shifting blame on a reduction in growth/ necessity to do layoffs on perf metrics? How about not asking the people you just fired to write you a “long letter” expressing their gratitude?
I agree with all that. This is specifically about the style of writing, not the actions taken.
No it isn't, the two can't be disconnected.
They certainly can. In this case, the message is coming from the top, but the message and the actions are literally disconnected every time a middle manager or team lead has to tell people about some foolishness coming from the top of the company. And when the person making the decision is also the communicator, they can still make meaningful rhetorical decisions such as whether to apologize for their inability to make a good enough decision, to compliment or threaten the existing employees, to attempt to reveal whether to make up for the actions taken in some way, and so on, in addition to less consequential decisions about tone that may affect different employees according to their communication preferences.
I recommend becoming willing to evaluate how bad decisions are communicated to the degree you evaluate good ones as the former exercise aids the latter.