McDonald’s Plans Remote Layoffs. What HR Experts Say About the Practice.

The Wall Street Journal, citing an internal email from the company, reported on Monday that the fast food chain is temporarily closing its U.S. offices this week from Monday through Wednesday as the firm informs its corporate employees about the layoffs and other staffing decisions virtually. 

In a message sent to U.S. employees, McDonald’s asked people to cancel in-person meetings with vendors and other outside parties at its headquarters, the Journal reported, and those who don’t have access to a computer during the week should provide personal contact information to their manager.

Remote layoffs have become more common since the Covid-19 pandemic as employees started working from home or in a hybrid mode. But there has been outcries from workplace management experts that such practices are disrespectful and insensitive to those affected, making the already difficult situation even harder.

It isn’t difficult to understand why. When faced with any type of major loss in life, including the loss of work, people tend to seek comfort from others around them instead of grieving in isolation. “Leaving someone alone at one of their most vulnerable moments could be a little impersonal,” says Johnny Taylor, president and CEO of SHRM, an association for human resources professionals with more than 300,000 members.

“Virtual layoffs are really the worst type of layoffs,” says Gleb Tsipursky, CEO of work consultancy firm Disaster Avoidance Experts, which has helped many companies handle layoffs.

“It’s very convenient for the supervisor to not have to face the reality of the pain they cause their workers, but it’s definitely the kind of experience that employees are going to be most shocked and hurt by,” he tells Barron’s, “It’s specifically denying them the ability to be empathized with and to be heard, and to have a face to face experience with the company.”

Layoffs are better done in person because workers may have many questions—regarding severance pay, next steps, and the rationale behind the decisions—and employers should be available with answers, says Sandra Sucher, a professor of management at Harvard Business School who has studied company trust and layoffs for more than a decade.

“It’s also a sign of respect,” she adds, “If you’re involuntarily terminating someone from their means of employment, you owe them at least that much—acknowledging that you’ve created this situation that’s hard on them, and that you’re willing to be held to account for it.”

There are plenty of examples of how remote layoffs could backfire. When social media giant Twitter laid off half of its workforce last November following Elon Musk’s takeover, employees were notified in the middle of the night over email, and some found out when they were cut off from their corporate email and work laptops. 

In a move similar to McDonald’s, Twitter temporarily closed its office and suspended badges in order to “help ensure the safety of each employee as well as Twitter systems and customer data.” Employees who either were in the office or on their way were asked to return home.

Michelle Singletary, a Washington Post columnist, said Musk’s handling of layoffs was “egregious” and showed “a blatant lack of empathy.”

Likewise, Google parent
Alphabet
(ticker: GOOGL) delivered its mass layoffs in January via email and system lockouts. An ex-Google engineer described the experience as “a slap in the face” after working at the firm for more than 20 years. “I wish I could have said goodbye to everyone face to face,” he wrote on Twitter.

The situation could be exacerbated if the layoff emails don’t demonstrate enough respect and empathy. Earlier this year,
PagerDuty
(PD) CEO Jennifer Tejada was blasted for being “tone-deaf” after she announced the company would slash 7% of its global workforce—while promoting others—in a lengthy email that ended with a quote from Martin Luther King Jr. about leadership in difficult times.

Mishandling layoffs could hurt companies’ reputations and spell trouble for future hiring. In behavioral science, a person’s experience with something is largely determined by the most intense moment and the ending moment, explains Disaster Avoidance Experts’ Tsipursky, and a bad layoff experience will almost guarantee negative reviews on platforms like job-searching site Glassdoor. 

“People remember what was the narrative around the way that you let employees go, and not giving them the decency of any in-person meeting can hurt you in the long run,” echoes SHRM’s Taylor.

But remote layoffs aren’t all bad, says Taylor. If executed properly, it could provide employees with more dignity and respect. A virtual layoff allows the employee to avoid the scenario where “you’ve got to go sheepishly back to your office and gather your belongings while others watch,” he explains. “That’s embarrassing for the employee and uncomfortable for those who remain, because there’s oftentimes survivor’s guilt associated with major layoffs.”

Shutting down the entire office, while uncommon, ensures that “no one in the workplace have to deal with their awkward separation moment,” says Taylor.

In the postpandemic era when many people are already working from home, it is especially debatable whether it’s more humane to call someone into the office––given the commute time––only to be told that they are terminated, he says.

In the case of McDonald’s, a person familiar with the matter told Barron’s that the company decided to close down the offices and notify people remotely “out of respect” and aims to “give people the comfort of being at home and having the conversations confidentially.”

The company is conducting conversations this week not only with employees who are laid off, the person said, but also those getting promotions or moving into new roles. That has also contributed to the decision to deliver the news virtually over a couple of days in a more private manner.

These aren’t good enough reasons to conduct layoffs virtually, says Harvard’s Sucher says about McDonald’s. She acknowledges the “awkwardness” of being called into someone’s office for a conversation, but thinks it at least recognizes there’s human contact. 

“I don’t think that is worse versus waiting at home for three days to see if you get contacted,” she says, “This looks more like an attempt to cushion management from taking accountability for a tough action that they’ve had to take.”

Ultimately, what matters is not whether layoffs are delivered online or in person, but whether there are meaningful conversations—even over Zoom—that are supportive and considerate of the hardship workers are going through.

McDonald’s latest layoffs will be in the hundreds, not thousands, according to the person familiar with the matter. The firm employed more than 150,000 people globally by the end of last year, roughly 45,000 of those workers are based in the U.S.

In a world where much of the work life has shifted online, employees might need to adjust their expectations. “Everything from talent hunting, onboarding, training, and working can be done remotely. I’m not sure why all of a sudden, there is a problem with terminating your employment remotely,” Taylor says. “People want parts of the prepandemic world but not the other parts that arise. That’s not the way life works.”

Write to Evie Liu at [email protected]