Coronavirus: What's it like to be laid off over Zoom?
When travel start-up Pana held a meeting for all of its employees over Zoom, they explained that some staff would be laid off, and that there would be two further calls that morning - one at 09:00 for those who would be laid off, and one at 09:45 for those who would not.
Employees would know which meeting they were attending by the invites they would have received by email. Sales executive Ruthie Townsend was invited to join the 09:00 call but, due to the shock of the news, she could not remember which call was for those about to be laid off, and which was for those being retained. "Because it was such a highly stressful situation, it was hard to process what was going on so I got mixed up. I joined the 09:00 call as that was the invite I had, and once I realised that I was being laid off, I quickly turned off my video," she says. Ms Townsend was on the call with 15 of her colleagues, and executives from the company then walked these employees through the benefits, the severance package and the next steps.The company, based in Denver, Colorado, had been hit by the collapse in travel due to the coronavirus outbreak. But there had been a feeling that redundancies would be a last resort, and Ms Townsend had no idea what was coming that morning. That kind of shock is unfortunately commonplace at the moment, as companies are slashing staff numbers to cope with the economic fallout from the coronavirus.Now video-conferencing tools, such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams , are being used to replicate the formality of the meeting. Chris Malone, an audio visual technician at events company Sparq in the UK, feared for his role when it was explained to him that a HR representative would be on his next MS Teams call along with his line manager.For him, the use of a video call made the meeting formal, but more awkward than an in-person meeting or telephone call."I think if you were doing it over the phone, it would mean you don't have to look at someone but when you have the video call, you get dressed up to make it feel formal and to look presentable. "Even though it is a video call, the pressure is there - and as you're not in the room with them there isn't a natural chemistry, connection or body language you can read off, and there's a little bit of a delay, you're waiting for someone else to say something," he says. However, Mr Malone believes that a one-to-one video call is still the best way a business can break the unfortunate news to an employee in the current circumstances."I don't think any way of making someone redundant over video conference is going to be ideal. If it's one-on-one, it's still going to be really hard and then your boss is going to see all of your emotions. I liked the group setting because I turned off my video, and I didn't have to say anything," she says. However, she believes that the group setting prevented her from asking important questions at the time.
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