'Survivor's guilt' | Mass layoffs leave HR facing a morale crisis among remaining staff

The pandemic tech boom has subsided, and after a period of hiring sprees and rapid growth, more recent headlines are filled with tech sector layoffs, hiring freezes and job offers being pulled.

Google's parent Alphabet announced last week that it is cutting about 12,000 jobs as it faces "a different economic reality", according to a staff memo seen by Reuters.

The job cuts affect six percent of the tech behemoth’s workforce, and follows thousands of layoffs at tech giants including Amazon, (18,000 cuts announced) Microsoft (10,000) and Meta, (11,000) which is downsizing after a pandemic-led hiring spree left them flabby in a weak economy.

When redundancies take place on this scale, there’s a tendency (including from HR Grapevine, admittedly) to focus on how HR should approach the process, from both legal and ethical standpoints, and how to support the outgoing workers in their new job searches – from providing positive references to signposting financial support.