What can possibly explain a number of tech giants like Meta, Netflix, Byju’s, CNN, Amazon, and more companies laying off thousands of their employees in the span of a few months? The answer could be complex in nature, but now it’s simply become a fad, a new trend in the market called Copycat Layoffs.
It started with Twitter firing over 3,500 employees – Copycat Layoffs
What can possibly explain a number of tech giants like Meta, Netflix, Amazon, Byju’s, CNN, Kraken, Salesforce, and more companies laying off thousands of their employees in the span of a few months? The answer could be complex in nature, but now it’s simply become a fad, a new trend in the market called Copycat Layoffs.
Copycat Behavior won’t help Tech Firms
This copycat behavior is mostly the result of social contagion, where companies just blindly copy what others doing. These layoffs may not be particularly evidence-based. Mass layoffs like these only just reduce overall company performance, create a negative environment, and ain’t much help in reducing costs. So one could wonder if there could be a tech recession or if these companies overhired. Layoffs clearly aren’t going to solve the underlying problem, it is an ineffective strategy and just a bad decision. Read our blog below on tech layoffs in 2022 to know how it all started.
“Look for alternate solutions like a 10 percent wage cut instead of laying off 10% of their workforce.”
Twitter has sacked almost half of its employees
The overall workforce of Twitter has now reduced to 3,000 from 8,000 employees across the world. It makes me think of looking for alternate solutions like a 10 percent wage cut instead of laying off 10% of their workforce. This breakthrough in the market can be an opportunity to look at job market data and make strategic decisions using a talent intelligence tool or implementing a talent intelligence team. Read the post where Ashneer Grover from Bharatpe shares his opinion on this topic from a founder’s perspective.
From Diversity to Adversity and Expulsion
Companies have gone from working from the office to working from home to sometimes working from the office to working for somebody else, all in a span of a few months. Over 50,000 employees were sacked in Nov 2022 and today the number is nearly 1,20,000. We are talking about 300+ tech companies taking part in the copycat layoff trend. Most founders admit that the company overhired and suddenly fired, impacting a broader economic slowdown. Read the article published by Forbes, where they talk about each copycat company and why they could have participated in this trend.
Build a cohesive TI team to take care of jobs strategy, improve internal mobility, and help employees to upskill according to experience, skillsets, and seniority level.”
Solution? Build a cohesive Talent Intelligence team
As the overall layoffs exceed a lakh in a short span, investors have their brows raised, anticipating a recession. If a recession is averted, the copycat layoffs might make some sense. We see some companies like Walmart have frozen their hiring plans for this quarter. Whatever might be the reason, what we do know for sure is building a cohesive TI team to take care of jobs strategy, improve internal mobility, and help employees to upskill according to experience, skillsets, and seniority level. Read our blog on how to set up a TI – talent intelligence team and use the platform for making data-driven decisions.
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