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The annals of poorly managed restructuring are full of classic episodes made worse by technology. Staff have suffered mass redundancies from Tannoy, Voicemail, Text Messaging and Zoom. PwC’s UK branch has now charted new territory and attempted to organize a round of “quiet redundancies” via email.
It turned out that the effort of the big four to dampen the farewell of colleagues participating in “targeted voluntary severance pay” is far from silent. Maybe it’s not even that new. Of course, the more successful attempts to stop departing workers from broadcasting their redundancy are hard to detect.
PwC’s mistake appears to have been to tell those who were leaving not to mention that they had accepted the settlement, that they were to go, and then to advise them on how to say goodbye. For example: “After recent discussions with my [relationship leader], I decided to leave PwC. It wasn’t an easy decision for me to make, but now that I’ve done it, I’m excited about what the future holds and the new opportunities on the horizon. I really enjoyed my time at PwC and the opportunity to work with such talented colleagues.”
There is no quicker way to ensure that company secrets are exposed than to insist that they remain under wraps. The e-mail edict “no [to] refer to voluntary severance offer or circumstances of departure’ became the FT’s second most read story last weekend. Someone in PwC’s HR team may now be feeling less “excited about what the future holds” themselves.
Of the possible explanations, HR professionals were quick to point to the evil or incompetence of HR managers who swooped in to eliminate redundant employees while avoiding panic or a rush for a limited severance pot.
Nevertheless, most companies go through regular restructuring. Sometimes because they have to reverse a mismanaged expansion, but often because fluctuating demand has left the right people in the wrong place.
It is possible that PwC is simply out of practice. Professional services firms are used to hiring thousands of people and letting high levels of natural attrition cause layoffs for them. Young auditors and consultants do short stints with the Big Four – long enough to pass professional exams or add a logo to their LinkedIn profile – before moving on to other careers.
But slowing demand has led to restrictions and headlines. Deloitte, which uses the same word as PwC, launched a “targeted” restructuring last year that came under fire for planning to cut 150 junior consulting jobs – curtailing the careers of staff who joined only a year or two ago. McKinsey, a master of the diplomatic “up or out” approach to firing employees, had to take a sharper ax on underperformers. They are now, euphemistically, “recommended to leave”.
White-collar rejects occasionally make noise, which may also explain PwC’s efforts to silence those soon to be cut. One PwC audit trainee who failed his audit exams in 2016 went viral with his ill-advised outburst of outgoing emails, explaining: “I didn’t really enjoy [my] time spent at PwC has a lot to do with exam stress and a low boredom threshold.”
The most charitable interpretation is that the PwC email was the product of an HR person’s overzealous effort to prepare a mass response to genuine individual inquiries about how to sensitively manage what might be unpleasantness in the office.
Whatever the explanation, the dictate of redundancy was itself redundant. In my experience, most people who decide to take a paycheck to quit don’t complain or complain about it. They don’t need to. Most of their colleagues know what happened through the office grapevine, which is always more efficient and accurate than most internal HR-mediated communications.
It remains to be seen whether the Gen Z trend of “loud termination” via TikTok and other social media will spread. But unhappy leavers usually recognize that there’s no point in grumbling publicly, lest it upset a potential future boss or client. The lucky ones want to move on and use their paycheck as a stepping stone to a better or different path. Both groups are comfortable with their next episode’s narrative of casting themselves as dumpers rather than tippers.
However, if you’re going to cut and paste the PwC script, leave out a bit of the “new opportunities on the horizon” thing. Save the clichés for when you finally succeed – then brag openly that getting fired by a Big Four accountancy firm was “the best thing that ever happened to you”.
andrew.hill@ft.com