Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky has revealed a major regret involving the letter he wrote to laid off employees in 2020.
During a recent interview on the “ReThinking” podcast, Chesky said that he had to shift the company’s messaging after he wrote in the letter that he has a “deep feeling of love” for the 1,900 employees he laid off during the Covid pandemic.
“The reason I used the word ‘love’ is 'cause that's what I felt at the time,” said Chesky. “I wrote that letter fairly quickly. I didn't have a lot of time, and so I wrote what I felt, and I was pretty emotional when I was writing it. And it is true that a company's not a family. In fact, we had to make that pivot. We used to refer to ourselves as a family, and then we did have to fire people, or they'd have to leave the company, and yeah, you don't fire members of your family.”
Related: Spotify CEO is shocked by negative impact of recent layoffs
He also claimed that he opted to use the emotional language in the letter after he noticed that other companies were writing “inhumane” layoff notices.
“I basically looked at a bunch of people who'd done layoff letters, and I noticed something about the way companies lay people off. It's pretty inhumane,” said Chesky. “It seems like a human being didn't write it. It feels like an AI prompt or something. AI is more compassionate than most of these layoff letters, and I think what ends up happening is that the CEOs get very risk averse. They're not vulnerable, they're afraid to say the wrong thing. They don't actually speak from the heart. The lawyers and the HR people and everyone rounds the edges off them.”
In 2020, a record number of employees lost their jobs due to the pandemic shutting down a plethora of businesses. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, during the fourth quarter of 2020, 10.8 million people were unemployed, which is a 4.9 million increase from what was reported at the end of 2019.
In the midst of widespread layoffs from the pandemic, which continued to take place after 2020, the way companies were laying off employees began to be put under a microscope after a few companies botched the process.
In December 2021, Better.com CEO Vishal Garg laid off about 900 employees via a zoom call, and received backlash for how he conducted them.
“If you’re on this call, you are part of the unlucky group that is being laid off,” said Garg on the call, according to CNN. “Your employment here is terminated effective immediately.”
Garg later apologized in a letter to employees for the way he handled the layoffs, claiming that he failed to show an “appropriate amount of respect and appreciation” for the outgoing employees.
Related: Cloudflare CEO responds after video of employee's layoff goes viral
Most recently, Tesla received heat for the email it sent to a group of its employees (who appeared to require job accommodations for a disability) that revealed that they were being laid off due to recent changes at the business and a lack of other roles that they would qualify for.
The email differed from traditional layoff emails by failing to thank workers for their time at the company and grant them well wishes for any future endeavors.
The way a company lays off employees can have a major impact on how much the remaining employees trust the company. A 2023 survey by professional services company PwC revealed that 55% of the employees that were polled said that the way their company executed a layoff harmed their trust. Also, 57% of employees said that executives being more transparent about the reasons for a layoff could help build their trust in a company.
More Labor:
- Dropbox CEO believes that return-to-office mandates are toxic
- Job recruiter goes viral for revealing how applicant lost the job
- Employees of bankrupt retailer forced to kick customers out of store
Related: Veteran fund manager picks favorite stocks for 2024
