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The annals of restructuring gone wrong are full of classic episodes made worse by technology. Employees have been laid off en masse because of Tannoy, voicemail, texting and Zoom. Now the UK arm of PwC has charted new territory with an attempt to organize a round of “silent layoffs” by email.
The Big Four’s attempt to hush up the farewell of colleagues participating in a “targeted voluntary severance package” has proven to be far from quiet. It might not even be that new. More successful attempts to prevent departing employees from announcing their resignations are inherently difficult to detect.
PwC’s mistake appears to be that it told those leaving not to mention that they had accepted a settlement to go, and then advised them how to say goodbye. For example: “Following recent conversations with my [relationship leader], I have made the decision to leave PwC. It wasn’t an easy decision for me, but now that I have, I’m excited about what the future holds for me and the new opportunities on the horizon. I have thoroughly enjoyed my time at PwC and the opportunity to work with such talented colleagues.”
There is no quicker way to ensure that trade secrets are revealed than to insist that they remain hidden. The edict by email “not [to] refer to the voluntary redundancy offer or the circumstances of the departure” became the second most read FT story last weekend. Someone in PwC’s HR team may now feel less “enthusiastic about what the future holds”.
Of the possible explanations, the HR bashers quickly pointed to the evil or incompetence of personnel managers who had overcome themselves to fire redundant staff without avoiding panic, or a rush for limited severance pay.
Yet most companies undergo periodic restructuring. Sometimes because they have to reverse poorly managed expansion, but often because fluctuating demand has left the right people in the wrong places.
It is possible that PwC is simply out of practice. Professional services companies are used to hiring thousands of people and having layoffs happen for them through high natural attrition. Young auditors and consultants do short stints with the Big Four – long enough to pass their professional exams or add the logo to their LinkedIn profile – and then move on to the next career challenge.
But a slowdown in demand has led to cuts and headlines. Deloitte last year launched, using the same word as PwC, a “targeted” restructuring that was attacked because it planned to cut 150 junior consultancy jobs – shortening the careers of staff who had joined the firm just one or two years earlier. McKinsey, master of the diplomatic ‘up or out’ approach to employee dismissals, has had to take a tougher approach to underperformers. They are now, euphemistically, advised to leave.
White-collar rejections occasionally make noise, which may also explain PwC’s attempt to silence those about to be cut. A PwC trainee auditor who failed his audit exams in 2016 went viral with his poorly reviewed outgoing email, explaining: “I didn’t really enjoy much of [my] The time at PwC largely has to do with exam stress and a low boredom threshold.”
The most charitable interpretation is that PwC’s email was the product of an over-enthusiastic attempt by an HR executive to prepare a mass response to genuine individual questions about how to subtly deal with what is an uncomfortable office experience can be.
Whatever the explanation, the dismissal diktat itself was unnecessary. In my experience, most people who choose to receive a reward for quitting don’t moan or complain about it. It is not necessary. Most of their colleagues know what happened through the office environment, which is invariably more efficient and accurate than most HR-mediated communications within the company.
Whether the Gen Z trend of “quitting loudly” via TikTok and other social media becomes more widespread remains to be seen. But disgruntled leavers usually realize there’s no point in grumbling publicly for fear it will irritate a potential future boss or client. The lucky ones want to move on and use their payout as a springboard to a better or different path. For both groups, casting themselves as the dumper instead of the dumpee fits the narrative of their next episode.
But if you are going to cut and paste the PwC script, please leave out the part about pursuing “new opportunities on the horizon”. Save the clichés for when you finally make it—and then openly brag that getting fired from a Big Four accounting firm is “the best thing that ever happened to you.”
andrew.hill@ft.com