Courtesy of Angela Champ
- Angela Champ is an HR executive. She's helped manage layoffs at previous employers.
- At one former company, Champ said, the layoffs were scheduled in 15-minute increments over the day.
- One layoff was suddenly canceled when a coworker unwittingly saved that person's job by retiring.
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Angela Champ, the senior vice president of human resources at the Vancouver, British Columbia, facilities company Alpine Building Maintenance and the author of "The Squiggly Line Career: How Changing Professions Can Advance a Career in Unexpected Ways." The downsizing described in the essay below took place at a company where Champ was previously employed. The following has been edited for length and clarity.
We were a national company with thousands of employees across Canada, and we were downsizing across all divisions. From Calgary, Alberta, I was a vice president of human resources.
Up until that point, I was so in love with this company that I used to joke I would get a tattoo of its logo.
Then executive leadership decided it was going to terminate more than 100 people. I felt it was contrary to the values that we had been espousing and the culture we had built. I really had a hard time wrapping my brain around it.
Initially, I proposed offering early retirement and allowing people to apply for voluntary severance packages. But C-suite leadership didn't want to do that.
It was scheduled down to the 15-minute mark
While planning the layoffs, HR felt that doing all the layoffs on one day and managing the communications that were going out would help us control the narrative. Because we were in different time zones in Canada, we had agreed that we were going to do everything within a four-hour window. It was scheduled down to the 15-minute mark.
We had scripted it out for our own divisions. I was in the west division. We had simultaneous terminations going on, and each HR business partner was assigned one or two people.
The managers didn't know this was happening. The only people who knew this was happening were the executives and the HR team. The executive responsible for the termination would go sit the manager down and explain what was happening.
Then HR would call the employee to a meeting.
We would explain that their employment was being terminated as a result of corporatewide downsizing. Then we would go over their severance offer.
Another HR person would go and gather the person's belongings — their purse, their keys, their lunch bag — and bring them to the room. The employee would be discreetly escorted out of the building. We packed up the person's desk after the fact.
Once everything was done, we met with the teams of the colleagues to explain what had happened and, where we could, give assurances that the cuts were over. This was going to be the impact. This is how we were going to transition the work. Because often in cases when somebody leaves, the remaining people pick up the workload.
I didn't want to hurt anyone's self-esteem
Unfortunately, I had two members on my team that were on the list. I did the first one, and the employee was completely caught off guard. When he asked why he was getting laid off, the only thing I could say was, "We're downsizing."
Then I hopped on a plane to another city to do the second one. I was completely sick to my stomach on the flight. I didn't want to affect somebody's livelihood; I didn't want to affect somebody's self-esteem. This person would have to go home and face their family and friends.
I arrived at the next office and was walking into the meeting to do the termination with my second person.
As I was walking in, I got a phone call from Calgary from one of my other managers who didn't know any of this was happening. He said to me, "Angela, I've decided I'm going to retire. I'm phoning to give you one month's notice."
I immediately called my boss, who was the senior vice president of operations. I said, "Hey, this is what's happening. Should we abort this termination I'm about to do?" And she said, "Yes, because that will count as one of the layoffs." We ended up not doing the second termination.
Maybe there was something in the air
I believe it was totally coincidental. The person who retired wouldn't have known that saying he resigned would save somebody else's job. Nobody knew layoffs were coming except the executives and the HR team.
Then again, who knows what energy was in the air? You would be surprised at how many times a company has decided to terminate somebody on a certain day, say, on a Tuesday, and that Tuesday, the person calls in sick.
Ultimately, executive leadership made arbitrary decisions about which departments to cut and by how many people, without any analysis of need, knowledge capture, and knowledge transfer.
It was the first time in 70 years that this company had downsized, and it caused a lot of disengagement and distrust.