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On Wednesday, Google's CEO, Sundar Pichai, sent a memo to employees addressing the latest rounds of layoffs at the company. The memo, which was reviewed by Alex Heath of The Verge, told employees that there was more to come.
That's probably not the message most employees were hoping for. That's not surprising--if the company you work for is telling people they no longer have a job, you will want to know whether you're on that list.
I wrote earlier this week that the fact that these layoffs were being reported publicly without any kind of response from Pichai was a big problem. If you're the CEO of a company the size of Google, and you're letting go of more than 1,000 people, you have to say something. Your team deserves at least that.
In fact, I heard from a number of employees, all of whom shared the same sentiment: They believe there will be more to come. The fact that Pichai confirmed that expectation doesn't alleviate any of the anxiety that comes with the uncertainty around whether your job will be affected. There is, however, another important aspect of Pichai's memo that I think is worth addressing. It's a lesson for every leader:
"We have ambitious goals and will be investing in our big priorities this year," the memo said, according to The Verge. "The reality is that to create the capacity for this investment, we have to make tough choices."
The thing is, Pichai and, presumably, his top executives are the ones who set those "big priorities." They're also the people who set whatever priorities led to hiring all of the employees who are now being laid off. Of course, that's not how Pichai explains it. His memo doesn't acknowledge that he got the strategy wrong. Instead, he just talks about things like "resource allocation decisions":
"Many of these changes are already announced, though to be up front, some teams will continue to make specific resource allocation decisions throughout the year where needed, and some roles may be impacted," Pichai wrote.
Transparency, it turns out, is one of the most important things your employees are looking for in a situation like this. That means being honest and up front about the scope of what is happening. Talking about "big priorities" isn't transparent. It just sounds like the kind of thing CEOs say when they want to use inspiring words that don't mean anything. Instead, Pichai should clearly explain where the company went wrong, and why it is no longer going to give some number of employees a paycheck.
That leads to the second thing your employees are looking for, which is accountability. Google's executives intentionally chose to focus on specific business areas and--as a result--made "resource allocation decisions" to hire employees. Now, it seems as though those decisions were wrong. Pichai and his team bet on a strategy that didn't pay off. Now, it isn't Pichai who is losing his job, but more than a thousand Google employees. That's not accountability.
I guess that isn't surprising, but it's not how leaders should respond to difficult decisions. Leaders should be accountable, not just to shareholders or the public but also to their employees.
Finally, maybe the most important thing you can provide for your team is certainty. It's easy to think of employees as just another resource a company uses to produce whatever product you make, but they are humans who make decisions about things like where to live, whether their job will help them take care of their family, or whether it meets their career goals. Giving them certainty is just the right thing to do.
Creating certainty is good for business as well, by the way. Employees who aren't worried about whether they might lose their jobs next are happier, less stressed, and more productive. They're also a lot less likely to be looking for a new job somewhere else.
Ultimately, Google's biggest problem right now isn't that it thinks it has too many employees--it's that those employees don't trust their leaders. Those employees are frustrated and anxious about what might happen to them. It's a good thing that Pichai finally addressed the layoffs. I just can't help but think a little transparency, accountability, and certainty would have gone a long way toward alleviating the real problem.
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Google's CEO, Sundar Pichai, Finally Responded to the Company's Layoffs. It's a Lesson for Every Leader
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On Wednesday, Google's CEO, Sundar Pichai, sent a memo to employees addressing the latest rounds of layoffs at the company. The memo, which was reviewed by Alex Heath of The Verge, told employees that there was more to come.
That's probably not the message most employees were hoping for. That's not surprising--if the company you work for is telling people they no longer have a job, you will want to know whether you're on that list.
I wrote earlier this week that the fact that these layoffs........
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