When Amazon.com began laying off 14,000 employees last month, some staffers learned of their fate via a text at home telling them to consult their inboxes.
An email with the subject line “Update Regarding Your Role at Amazon” awaited them: “Unfortunately, your role is being eliminated.” Employees could join a voluntary meeting with a company leader or human-resources representative to ask questions, it added. At that point, some decided: Why bother?
The swift text-email combination marked yet another evolution in the often-changing tactics employers deploy to jettison workers. The pandemic brought on the rise of individual Zoom calls and surprise calendar invites to HR meetings. Now, the aim is to keep layoffs even more efficient—with fewer chances for ugly public scenes or communal emoting.
The goal is to communicate the bad news “as quickly as possible across a large swath of the employee population” to help control the message and limit stress on workers, said George Penn, a managing vice president at Gartner who advises companies on how to minimize risks in staff restructurings.
Though there is never a good way to tell employees they are losing their jobs, he said, “At the end of the day, you’re looking for the least-bad option.”
Many employees on the receiving end say there is no such thing, and the newer methods have drawn criticism. “Who thought that was OK?” a LinkedIn user wrote about Amazon’s layoffs. “When you lay people off with dignity, you prove your values are real. When you do it via text? You prove they were just words.”
Other layoffs have been complicated in recent weeks by inaudible Zoom calls or other glitches. Some managers have been cut out of the loop on staff reductions, unable to answer questions or explain dismissals to teams.
One reason companies keep changing tactics is to head off disruptions. Southwest Airlines closed corporate offices to most staffers during its corporate layoffs earlier this year; some employees learned of their status at home on video calls in listen-only mode. Target told U.S. corporate employees to work from home the week in October that it conducted layoffs.
Learning of a layoff decision remotely prevents teary embraces in the office as workers emerge from conference rooms after receiving bad news, according to HR specialists. It can also solve a logistical challenge: When companies are cutting thousands of workers at once, there usually aren’t enough HR people or leaders available for individual meetings—another reason companies now notify people en masse.
It is an undertaking in which plenty can still go awry. During Target’s recent layoffs, some employees logged on to a Zoom call—only to discover an audio glitch in the first few minutes that prevented them from hearing parts of the conversation. The company later emailed workers to apologize for the snafu—and to reiterate that they had been laid off—according to a copy of the note viewed by The Wall Street Journal.
A Target spokesman acknowledged the audio issue but said the email after the call was always planned. He added that the Zoom glitch didn’t prevent those in the meeting from hearing the information before the call ended.
Other cuts have led to more-dramatic scenes. After the media company Condé Nast said it would move its Teen Vogue publication under Vogue.com and let some employees go, a group of workers confronted an HR executive, Stan Duncan, outside his office to ask for an explanation. Video of the encounter quickly ricocheted across the internet. Condé Nast later fired four participants involved in the in-office protest and suspended others.
The firings then sparked their own protest in a rally outside Condé Nast headquarters in Lower Manhattan on Wednesday. New York Attorney General Letitia James attended the rally, at which people held signs saying, “Reinstate the Fired Four.” James threatened to take Condé Nast to court.
A Condé Nast spokeswoman said those terminations were lawful and based on clear violations of company policies. “We have an obligation to protect our workplace from harassment and intimidation,” she said. “If the attorney general has concerns, we are happy to respond to her.”
Some companies telegraph in advance that layoffs are coming to lessen the shock, though that can fuel anxiety, too. Verizon Communications Chief Executive Daniel Schulman indicated in an all-hands meeting in recent weeks that layoffs were coming, according to a person familiar with the matter. The company is planning to eliminate roughly 15,000 jobs in the coming days, its largest reductions ever, the Journal previously reported.
Does any of it make a difference? Veteran HR specialists say yes: The tone and style of a layoff discussion can matter greatly in how employees ultimately process a dismissal.
“For a lot of people, the way it’s communicated to them actually will reduce the chances that it’s a negative separation,” said Vanessa Matsis-McCready, vice president of HR services at Engage PEO, which handles HR functions for small and midsize businesses.
To prepare companies, she often suggests that HR executives role-play layoff interactions. When she does such exercises with clients, Matsis-McCready will often play the part of a frustrated, or emotional, employee learning of a layoff.
“I’ve cried. I’ve done very angry responses,” she said. “It is really important to be prepared for any type of response.”
The goal is to learn how to defuse a situation and respond sensitively. A one-on-one conversation with an employee that goes relatively smoothly can help to prevent a laid-off worker from taking to social media or voicing outrage elsewhere.
“When you’re laying somebody off,” she said, “you’re trying to be human about it.”
Source: WSJ.com November 16, 2025 | By Chip Cutter