Should Companies That Fire Shoot First

        In the past, more specifically before the new millennium, layoffs were usually kept quiet. Some local and national news stations would catch wind of the situation and make the knowledge public, but most of the time companies aimed to keep layoffs a private affair. Since then, social media has developed greatly as well as the Internet, which makes keeping company dismissals quiet a very difficult feat. There are globally-used websites out there now that are used to communicate informally with other users. These social networking sites are very quick to respond with breaking news about all sorts of different topics.

        During the Starbucks layoffs in 2008 and 2009 a specific social media website called StarbucksGossip.com had a vast amount of unhappy employees start utilizing the site to complain about the company. Some employees were extremely upset that the company was trying to blame them for not meeting sales goals when the economy was in a recession. Employees criticized Starbucks and explained that they used to be satisfied with the company, but are now furious with how they are treating their workers. Certain employees even stated that they were humiliated to be a part of such a company anymore. Many companies get this backlash due to budget cuts and layoffs, but how an organization handles it is crucial to their success.

        Various companies decide to take a more feasible approach to layoffs within their company. For example, when Tesla Motors made the decision to fire people in their company, the CEO named Elon Musk was determined to reveal the layoffs before the media could. He chose to announce the situation via a blog before declaring the situation within the company. Musk aimed to say something first so that nobody else could write articles about the circumstances that were false or erroneous. An individual that used to work for PepsiCo declared that if an organization does not want someone from the media to report particular events ahead of time or have them misconstrued, then the company needs to make an executive decision to convey the situation themselves.  This shows that in this day and age, the owners of companies seem to be in direct competition with the media to race to make announcements first.

        On the other hand, companies will decide to sit back and not report their story or back themselves up at all when it comes to layoffs within the organization. Particularly the newspaper company named Gannett elected not to make a report at all when it came to laying off 10 percent of their employees. A person who had since left the company is the writer for the Gannett’s informal blog and affirmed that he did not believe that the organization treats its employees with much honesty. Meanwhile another spokesperson for the company responded with the fact that the organization deems the situations to be awfully personal and does not feel the need to correspond with the public regarding these conditions and wishes to make their decisions promptly. This demonstrates that the reality is several companies are inclined to aim for their public relations specialists to handle the layoff situation, but this is not as common anymore due to the use of social media.