A daily scroll down your LinkedIn feed may be a strong bellwether for what many of us have been seeing for months. The cutting of jobs across a number of industries is intense. This impact became more concrete with the announcement of 75,891 job cuts in August. This was a 193% increase from the 25,885 job cuts announced one month prior, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a global outplacement and career transitioning firm in Chicago. The month of August was also the highest August total since 2009, when 76,456 layoffs were recorded. Cost-cutting was cited as the reason for the cuts with artificial intelligence playing a key role.
Taking to the Interwebs
Layoffs, especially when unexpected, are brutal and employees are using a range of social media, podcasts, livestreams and blogs to tell their personal account. While some are sharing their experiences as a platform toward the next job, others are looking to highlight where their employer did them wrong. Over the last couple of months, there’s been some eye-opening shares of the good, the bad and the ugly.
Slippery Slope
Companies want digitally savvy employees, and younger generations expect employers to provide a technologically advanced workplace. It should come as no surprise that content from social media, blogs, podcasts and live casts make up much of our screen time and inevitably will spill into the workplace.
A National Law Review blog, Laid-Off Workers Gain Influence on Social Media, Raising Concerns for Employers, by William E Grob and Leah J. Shepherd, highlighted how discussions of the job application process and chronicles of a “day in the life” of unemployment can become a source of concern for employers in the form of misinformation or embarrassing stories being shared online. This is also a potential opportunity for third parties who look to stand for employees in collective bargaining and potential litigation.
Long-range Effects
Social media sharing is largely not prohibited, providing an employee’s comments are true and not defamatory. The legal blog recommended how employers can protect their brand and public image. This includes offering severance agreements that provide payments to laid-off employees in exchange for returning their electronic equipment and agreeing not to disparage the former employer publicly.
While so much could be shared in the heat of the moment, both employers and former employees need to remember the long-range effect of individual actions. The recall of comments and posts is long, and one never knows when an old post could surface. Resolution might not always be possible but keeping reputations intact is important for brand reputation, networking today and employment in the future.
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