Episode 2 - The hard stuff - firing people

You can have Psychological Safety even with bad corporate culture, but it's harder! So what does a good culture look like when they're dealing the the hard stuff?

Articles Mentioned in the episode:

• Senior AWS dev claims Amazon is quietly trying to encourage employees to quit in a push to covertly cut numbers, https://www.itpro.com/business/senior-aws-dev-claims-amazon-is-quietly-trying-to-encourage-employees-to-quit-in-a-push-to-covertly-cut-numbers
• JPL Workforce Update, https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/jpl-workforce-update

Transcript

Deanna: 0:04

Hi, this is Deanna.

Kara: 0:05

And this is Cara,

Track 1: 0:07

And this is Got P. S., the podcast about psychological safety. And I want to start off today with a quick little bit of content warning. Kara does not have any caffeine due to doctor's orders, and it's making her a little grumpy.

Kara: 0:22

very slow today, but you got to do what you got to do, right? So we're going to just, you're going to pick up the slack for me, right, Deanna?

Deanna: 0:31

Of course, I mean, that's how it comes with a team. Everyone's not always going to bring their A game. And rather than punishing someone for doing that, you should really take up the slack, because Lord knows there's going to be a day when I'm not feeling my best, and I'm going to need your help. To get back to the meat of the matter, Last episode, we talked about full stack psychological safety, which is what this whole podcast is about. So Kara, want to catch us back up.

Kara: 0:58

During our first podcast, we introduced full stack psychological safety, which is comprised of five stages. The idea being that you can go up or down the stages going towards more psychological safety or less. And those stages are culture, community, conversation, contribution, and commitment. Now the last four stages are those that are normally demonstrated within a team and based on the team dynamics. But the first one, culture, is based on your organization and its culture. How it treats people, how things are going, what the current climate is based off its policies, behaviors, and leadership dynamics. So today, we're actually going to focus on this first stage, culture.

Deanna: 1:50

So corporate culture, as Kara mentioned, is not really part of team psychological safety, but it can help or hinder that team psychological safety. You could think about it as giving the team either a leg up or starting them at a deficit, depending on which goes on back in 2002, right? When the dot bomb was happening. I remember that. Our corporate culture got really, really bad because they were trying to make us all miserable and leave. Unfortunately, there were no jobs to be had for anyone in our sector. So we all stuck on and was miserable. Did we have psychological safety? Actually, After a while we did because it became an us versus them sort of thing, which is not healthy psychological safety. We would share great within the team, but the minute management came on we shut down. But let's talk a little bit about healthy culture. What does a healthy culture look like?

Kara: 2:49

If you remember from the previous podcast, Deanna and I gave a short phrase to remember kind of the goals of each level. And if you don't remember, let me give you the phrase. And for this one, it's everyone is welcome. It's a quick phrase just to help you remember the goals of this particular stage of full stack psychological safety. And what does that mean? You know, pretty much what you would think it means. You know, people of all shapes, sizes, religions sexual orientations, gender identifications are all welcomed, and not only welcomed, but they're valued. And not only are they valued at work, We want them to have a great work life balance so that they feel refreshed and whole when they come back into work. People are allowed to grow if they want to, or stay comfortable and stay where they are. So it's a place that kind of gives them the career they kind of want.

Deanna: 3:41

And I've got to say the whole idea of allowing you to not grow is something that's kind of hard. Modern. Corporate culture seems to always want you to grow to learn new things. But people get busy. Think about it. You just had a new child. Do you really want to grow at work? Or are you just going to be busy taking care of said Kid.? A healthy culture needs to understand that sometimes people don't want to grow. Sorry, bit of a soapbox there.

Kara: 4:08

And that's perfectly fine because if everybody wanted to grow, everybody'd be fighting for those particular positions that were growth positions, and then it would make psychological safety go up by the wayside anyway. So it's kind of healthy to have that kind of widespread dynamic going on there about career goals or lack thereof. But the last thing that we kind of want to hammer on today is What does executive management look like in this case when you have a good culture they should be transparent in their decisions in their conversations and Deanna's already laughing because yeah, we've got some stories to share but they're transparent in their conversations around the decisions that they're making. You know why they're doing what they're doing. Even if those conversations are uncomfortable, and that's what we're going to talk about today. So, Deanna, do you want to dive a little bit deeper into that?

Deanna: 5:01

Right, today we're going to be talking about uncomfortable things, specifically firing and layoffs. We know a lot of it's going on, especially within the tech sector, as companies right and left are divesting themselves of more and more people. Sometimes they're actually choosing not to lay people off because, let's face it, then there's all sorts of Hoops you've got to go through due to federal law and state law to be fair to the people you're laying off. It's much easier to engage in something that is called silent sacking.

Kara: 5:32

So silent sacking came up through a blog post by somebody named Justin Garrison and he was employed by Amazon in the AWS sector. And really what it encompasses is things that we're kind of seeing all over the place. It is making things so uncomfortable for people that they want to leave. Not only do you save on their salaries, because you don't have to pay them out anymore. Because they left, you don't have to give them severance either. So it's like a double bang for your buck.

Deanna: 6:03

Yeah, I experienced that back. Like I said, right around 2002 when the dot bomb crash happened. Our company started engaging in so many new rules and regulations that it made all of us miserable. I'm pretty sure 90 percent of the population would have quit if there were jobs for us to move to. In fact, one guy Who'd been over in China during the whole student uprising with Tiananmen Square and everything started putting us together into little secret cells to go against the management. Okay, we never got anywhere other than complaining to each other. But think about that. We spent hours upon hours complaining to each other. Those were hours where we could have been productive, but instead we were completely focused on how miserable we were and how we could possibly deal with management.

Kara: 6:53

Yeah, we could go on and on about the productivity loss. Oh, my mercy. But really, you know, what was happening is a lot of companies, they saw some growth over COVID. There was a hiring increase over COVID. I have to say during COVID, we've heard from people that were hired on with promises of being fully remote during that time. Or they had really great salaries given to them because it was quite competitive. Things have turned from last year and going into this year. inflation's a little different, stock prices have fallen, and so companies are scrambling to try to get those stock prices back up. What's the cheapest and easiest way to do that? Get people to leave. It is a very short term fix, but it is very productive. However, it is a boo. However, the thing that is not a a stock increase, is Would be if you laid them off. Not only is it just bad press, which is what happened to Amazon the first time early in 2023 before they started doing silent sacking, they laid off to about 26 or 27, 000 people. It looks bad. Even though that's a fraction of their population. They had to pay severance packages to all those people. It was a Many hits against stock prices in that case. It's better to do the silent sacking that's what a lot of corporations have done. I have to say Justin's post As he complained about this and really laid bare what was going on and his ideas as to the reason why got picked up by a lot of online tech magazines that are going on around there. One of them being ITPro. One of the quotes that I wanted to share from their article And this is a direct quote from the article. The biggest problem with such an approach would be that it's indiscriminate. As you don't know who will quit and who will stay, the employer risks losing top talent who are more mobile because they're more attractive to competitors and get left with less mobile, more mediocre employees. So for, those who are left, they if they're high performers, they feel like they're picking up the slack of other people. They're seeing their friends, probably people they're very close to go. That's disheartening. And Deanna, what else? What did you see in your past?

Deanna: 9:05

Our productivity went way down. First of all, if anybody All right, again, this was 2002. There were no jobs to be had anywhere, so it's a little different than here. But trust me, we were all looking, and if we could have found a job, we would have been gone in a heartbeat. And that meant they would have lost an amazing amount of knowledge of just, for instance, let's just take me. I was the only one who could actually freaking debug the UI on one of our products. Everyone else got lost because honest to God, it was just really scary spaghetti code. If I had left any sort of UI changes, no one would be able to do it. Any sort of problems that happened, no one would be able to fix it. You're losing unique skills, you're losing your best and your brightest because they are the ones who are most mobile. Even those who stay and there's always going to be a percentage of really high performers that stay, they're going to be disillusioned, and they're not going to work as hard as they would normally. And instead, they'll group together and gossip with each other and share stories about who's been fired, what nasty thing they suspect is going to happen next, and all that sort of stuff. It ruins the atmosphere for everyone and it kills productivity completely.

Kara: 10:21

One thing I forgot to mention in terms of the major pain point that Amazon was using to make life uncomfortable was the return to office policy. Deana and I are both going through that as well. I'm not exactly sure what their RTO policy is over in our neck of the woods and what we have been hearing. It's usually, you know, be in so many days a week, they're looking at your badge swipes. If you were not ramping up to that, you might get memos of warning within your HR records and those types of things. It feels petty, right, Deanna? I mean, how do you feel about RTO?

Deanna: 10:55

not just petty, it's a one size fits all solution where it doesn't fit everyone. Some people, Coming back to the office is a real problem. Either they moved away and so now they've got a ginormous commute suddenly on them. They have family problems that they're dealing with. And they really need to be physically present more often than not. Some people, it's no problem. Some people love it. Look, I'm an extrovert. I enjoy coming into the office and talking and socializing with people. But what's happening, because everyone has gotten so used to being online and remote, is you come into the office, you plug into the network, and you have online meetings. You're not getting that sort of in person socialization, which is really what makes the office experience, rich and exciting and fun. We've got a real problem with this going on. I really think a little bit more flexibility would be useful to take a look at each and every person in their situation. And okay, these companies, like Amazon, hundreds of thousands of people. You can't look at each and every person, but that's why you have to go and roll the decisions down to lower management. The person who's only got maybe 10 people underneath them, who actually can look at everyone individually, but that requires trust. You've got to trust your management. So when they say, I need to make an exception for someone, you believe that they're doing this. It's for the good of not just the person, but for the company. What we're seeing a lot of is the trust is broken. Upper management doesn't trust the boots on the ground people anymore.

Kara: 12:31

That's exactly true. If you summarize up what a good culture would look like, trust would be one of the, base, cornerstones of that kind of culture. Another quote that I actually want to bring up, because a lot of what you were saying Goes along with this quote. It's also from the IT pro article. We will have a link to this in our show notes, but they said this in blame cultures or environments where difficult conversations are avoided. It's often easier to let someone else go than admit to internal failings. And I would say in some cases, those internal failings would be just being very honest with those who are performing and those who aren't. That's where some of the disillusionment is coming from is, your company that says you want to deliver the best to your customers, yet you're willing to enact some kind of policy that will let some of your best employees go and some of your brightest talent. This doesn't make any sense to me.

Deanna: 13:25

Oh, it does. It makes total sense to me. It's called money.

Kara: 13:29

It only makes sense if you realize that the people above you are only looking at the bottom line

Deanna: 13:35

They see as being fungible is the problem. We're all replaceable. They don't understand that people have unique skills and talents and abilities.

Kara: 13:44

it's too hard to do that. It's too easy to make everybody. Fit in a box and be a number.

Deanna: 13:49

if you've got 100, 000 people in your company, how can you look at each and every person as an individual? You can't, which is why you end up making broad decisions. No problem with that. I understand that has to happen, but you should allow the managers closest to the situation you're in. to adjust those broad decisions depending on the needs of their people. And that's what we're not seeing.

Kara: 14:14

If people don't remember Deanna and I are actually in the same department and there is. Data that says people will tend to leave a company oftentimes, not in these times, but oftentimes if they're direct manager, they don't get along with in our case. Our direct manager is fantastic and does really try to protect us and create a culture within our department. That is kind of an oasis, which is, Interesting and makes me feel valued. But when it gets to the point that it's getting to at this point, sometimes your lower level manager cannot protect you enough.

Deanna: 14:47

Yes. And then people get miserable and they leave.

Kara: 14:51

That's true.

Deanna: 14:52

is there a different way? That's what I want to talk about. Because yes, you can be open and honest with people and tell them something sucks and you're going to have to make changes. Doesn't mean we like it, but let's face it, there are times when it's going to suck, and you've got to admit it. I want to point you at JPL. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, whew, try and say that one three times fast has recently announced that they're going to be laying off people. Why? Part of it, okay, not part of it, all of it is Congress's fault because Congress can't get together and do their job and actually pass spending bills. NASA directed JPL to assume that they were going to get half. the money that they got the year before. They tried to do a bunch of things to cut their expenses.. They did a hiring freeze. They reduced certain contracts and they implemented, various different cuts to budgets to help things along. But even that wasn't enough. And they came out and they were open and admitted. It's like, these are the things we tried. This is what's going on financially. They said, we're planning for a budget of only 300 million for the next Mars Rover. That's a 63 percent decrease over the FY 23 level. Wow, that's a lot. So they've done detailed the ways they tried to cut costs, even reducing the number of contractors they had. But it wasn't enough. And they admitted it. They're like, we're going to have to lay people off. Again, this sucked, but they were honest and upfront. And you really get the feeling that laying people off was the last thing they wanted to do. But there was nothing else. JPL actually announced that they're going to be doing a workforce reduction of approximately 530 people, which is only 8%. That's not. awful. But unless you're one of those 530 people, in which case, yes, it is absolutely dreadful. JPL went on to explain how the layoffs are going to happen. Everyone would have meetings with their management. The people who would be getting emails either saying you're being laid off or not. Okay, there are a couple things I thought were iffy. Like they sent everybody home before they told people who was being laid off or not. That was obviously to prevent any sort of bad acts by people getting laid off. Still, that shows a lack of trust, which is rather annoying, They gave personalized information to everyone via email as to whether they're staying or going. And then they scheduled discussions with trained professionals to help them understand what their benefits are in the layoff and what sort of transitional support there is. They informed everyone. Okay, some of this sounds really nice. Some of it is actually law, let's be honest about it. Some of this is not quite

Kara: 17:33

Out of the goodness of their heart.

Deanna: 17:34

Yes. Thank you. That's the words I was looking for. People were going to continue to get their pay and benefits for 60 days. The impacted employees would be offered some sort of a severance package, depending on. where they are in the company, I guess, and their time and service and all kinds of stuff like that. And they'd be getting transitional benefits, including placement services, and other benefits information. They're saying, this sucks. Here's the situation. Here's what we've done to try and prevent layoffs. And here's why we were stuck. We have to lay people off. We're sorry. But here's what we're going to do to try and help the people who get laid off. They're opening up front, they admitted things sucked. We'll put up with a lot of crap as long as management's actually willing to tell us that yes, it's a lot of crap, and they're sorry that they can't do anything. Then they tried to say how they're going to help you. This means even if you're staying at JPL, if you weren't one of the people being laid off, you at least feel better because you know, your friend who just got laid off is not getting screwed over. They've got paid, they've got benefits, they're going to be helped, probably given some sort of resume coaching and things like that. At least that's what happened when I got laid off years ago. You know that the company didn't want to, and they're trying to support the people who are going so that they're not just kicked to the curb. And that makes you feel better about it. I don't care how good you are as a company, people get laid off, and it will make an impact on people's productivity. But when you do something like this, you're far more likely to have people bounce back from it.

Kara: 19:07

Plus the other thing I would assume with a company like JPL, you're talking a lot of very specialized knowledge people that have, unique skills nice knowledge that you would want them to potentially come back if this rectifies. This is a little bit different than Amazon in that JPL is the receiving end of a bad deal. And they're trying to do the best they can with the cards they were dealt as opposed to some of the other companies we've seen out there where it's bad internal decisions and now things need to be rectified.

Deanna: 19:44

it's a lot harder to say, Hey guys, we have to lay off 600 of you because our accounting department dropped the zero somewhere and we're in trouble.

Kara: 19:53

Exactly. Exactly. I mean when we find that company, we're going to have a whole hour long, podcast special about them because they're going to be the unicorn.

Deanna: 20:03

That is very true. But think about it. Which company would you rather work for? Amazon, where they're just making you more and more miserable, hoping you will quit. Or JPL, which openly admits they're laying people off, but is there to try and support you through the transition, and who is up front as to why they're having to lay people off.

Kara: 20:22

And in this case with JPL, you kind of know there is one shoe and it's going to drop. They told you up front, it's going to be this kind of layoff. We've, cranked out the numbers. We understand the budget and this is what's going to happen. With silent sacking, You never know when it's going to end. You never know when that slow roll of pain, that tightening of the screw, when it's going to end. In that case, you have long term psychological damage to your workforce. They're living in fear and distress constantly until they start to see things turn around in a positive direction for a significant period of time.

Deanna: 21:03

They're never going to trust leadership the way they did before all of this. Even when leadership announces something good, they're going to be looking for the bad in everything.

Kara: 21:12

That's right. it really is going to be a bridge that is just burn

Deanna: 21:17

Yeah.

Kara: 21:17

for a very long time.

Deanna: 21:19

Yeah, there's something I like to call FUD. That term was used. Oh, I don't know, probably 20 some odd years ago, and it had to do with Microsoft dogging on the Linux operating system. It stands for fear, uncertainty and doubt. And, That is a killer for your corporate culture. It's a killer for keen productivity. If you're scared, if you're uncertain, if you're doubting people, you are not going to bring your best self to the office, you're not going to bring your best self to anything honest to God, and you're going to spend incessant hours talking over with other people, trying to figure out what rumor you heard is really true or not, because you're scared.

Kara: 22:05

It comes down to, are you working at a place where you feel valued? And those times that you feel valued are not always when you're getting an award, right Deanna? Sometimes people value you when they treat you with respect when things are hard. That's when you know you're valued.

Deanna: 22:23

Every time we got new stock options at one company I worked at our stock price tanked, so much for making us feel valued. It's not a number. It's really feeling like they're being honest with you. They trust you enough to tell you the truth.

Kara: 22:38

That is very true. This is our talk on culture, but this is just one of two talks that we're going to have on corporate culture. Deanna, what are we going to talk about next week?

Deanna: 22:48

Next week, we are going to talk about inclusion. Our favorite diversity and inclusion stuff, When we were on vacation, Cara and I encountered an absolutely wonderful example on how to make an inclusive culture. We want to talk to you about our experiences and why we think that more people should follow this.

Kara: 23:09

And boy, I wish I was back on that vacation. I miss it. It was fantastic in every way, shape and form at worst every time.

Deanna: 23:17

Yep. I just wish I was somewhere warm.

Kara: 23:19

That's true. It's been a shock to the system, the weather back here, boo. We hope everybody has enjoyed this edition of Got PS. I'm Kara.

Deanna: 23:28

And I'm Deanna and we'll talk to you later.