I'd like to know to which extent are managers' opinions factored into the decisions to lay off an employee. Some say that managers were not consulted for the layoff. What do you think?
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Me and several members of my department were laid off after we were told our roles would not be affected. We were all top performers and tenured employees. It was done in a sweeping, cold and calculated manor delivered in a stoic, robotic fashion. Never seen anything like it in my 20+ years at Nielsen. They have no respect for the people left either with tons of extra work abruptly dumped on them. Good luck with Nielsen One.
My boss' boss finally pulled my team into a meeting. Said nice things about me and that he had no idea this was going to happen at all in our dept. let alone to me specifically. He eluded to a new topic then stopped himself saying "oh, I can say/tell you that". Stated that he still had more people to talk to, but doesn't know anything further.
and yeah yearly reviews aren’t done yet but we did have to do a new rating system with these numbers, it was weird. We had to do that way back in … October? Early Nov? And they adamant about us not missing that deadline.
Those metrics for low performers played into it in my dept but we also lost 4 very very good people so not a clue there. Salary levels? Random? It was shocking to see them go dark on slack. Unexpected 100%.
I’m a manager and I was told NOTHING. My fellow managers were pulled into HR meetings and instructed on who they had to fire, no choice.
If our managers know something they aren’t saying.
AFAIK, the criteria is the slary level, as the main idea behind the layoffs is improvement of profit margins. So, whoever has higher salary are being let go without regard to other considerations.
Managers 100% know more than they are admitting to. Based off what mine said to our team it was a lot of "I wish I could tell you everything" , "what I CAN say is" , "all I'm allowed to tell you is" statements.
My manager never put any feedback in my year review and I had been here 1 year exactly
I wonder how I was decided
I was let go yesterday and based on my own situation I can tell you it came down to money. Then how many other people could do your role. This has nothing to do with performance. Though some departments got to choose some did not. I was the highest paid in mine and I knew on Tuesday I was getting cut because I was the highest paid and the person with the most years in service.
Even many VPs didn’t know about the layoffs, and those who were involved in deciding, had to sign NDAs. So lowly managers / directors had truly no idea, they only provided input to the extent that they wrote yearly evaluations for their employees. People who got laid off include those who had a less than successful review years ago, but then improved with support from their team and manager. Doesn’t matter, they were laid off anyway.
This is so unbelievable and little understood by the rank and file though that I’m sure a lot of employees blame the managers anyway, because nobody can fathom them not being involved in the decision.
The result of very high level people making decisions about people and names they don’t know (let alone what they were doing and how important they were) is that there will be many areas that are at risk. The effects of this will be felt over time, when the layoffs will already be in the rearview mirror, and managers again will be blamed then for letting things fail.
I can't believe that managers have been consulted in any way on these decisions. Those who have lost there jobs in my immediate circle are some of the best at their jobs / longest serving members of our teams. Many of them are vital to our coverage. The decision making seems wild and (honestly) random