The human factor to employee lay-offs

As India stares at massive lay-offs from not just tech giants but also key start-ups in India, the question of how can PR help companies manage the crisis arises. A thread of essentials that companies must bear in mind while devising their PR strategies for the crisis:

Human factor – PR serves as a gateway to not just consumer trust, but also employee trust. Companies need to sit with their PR teams and work on a compassionate, human-design PR strategy to the exit announcements. More than the exits, it’s about people and PR needs to lead from front on ensuring communication to employees is human-toned and compassionate.
Regular communication – One of the most critical things that a company will do during this time, will be to communicate honestly and regularly with employees (and media) about developments within the company and way forward. No communication will put employees in an even greater state of panic and lead to possibility of misinformation in the market. Timely and proactive communication from PR teams will help mitigate the crisis versus aggravating as many companies tend to believe.
Push the CEO to step-up – During the crisis, PR teams may face a strange problem of reluctant CEOs not wanting to step-up. In such case, PR teams will have to do their job and push CEOs to step up and take on responsibility of communicating on behalf of the company during the crisis.
Communicating Next Steps – Communicating ‘Next Steps’ will form an important part of PR approach to the layoff crisis. Working with HR and marketing teams and communicating with employees (and media) on initiatives by the company will help in seriously minimizing the damage by the company such as financial assistance, setting up alumni portal (as one start-up announced), assistance in finding jobs etc.
Mitigating damage on social media – As employees get laid off, they are likely to approach social media platforms and may share information that may not be accurate or could be misleading. In such cases, PR teams will have to actively respond and address/ correct any incorrect information being shared and respond with accurate information.

About the author:

Megha Sharma, Founder & CEO, Adrift Communications & Influencer Marketing