In the very immediate term: announce the same time you block access. Leaving people in limbo overnight is a shitty move.
In the longer term: announce layoffs ahead of time. Ask if anyone wishes to take voluntary redundancy. In general, make sure people aren’t going to be totally blindsided by losing their job.
> In the longer term: announce layoffs ahead of time. Ask if anyone wishes to take voluntary redundancy. In general, make sure people aren’t going to be totally blindsided by losing their job.
This isn't a great idea from a management perspective. The people who are willing to take severance voluntarily are the people who are most confident that they can find something else, which means they're the people you want to keep. It also assumes that layoffs are overall headcount reductions and not targeted in specific areas. For example with the Amazon layoffs, they wouldn't want people in AWS to leave since they're primarily targeting the Alexa/Echo divisions.
And if you went into Alexa/Echo and said "so we need to reduce headcount in Alexa/Echo, any volunteers?" you'd cause massive panic and distraction in that division.
Management saying "we're going to announce layoffs in a month" means that in addition to the pain that comes with getting laid off, there's also an additional month prior to that where people are stuck in limbo, "am I safe? am I on the chopping block? Should I start job hunting?" And since you're still employed, you still have to do your normal full-time job for 40 hours a week, on top of searching for a new job. It'd be incredibly stressful.
The reality is that there is no scenario where an employee who gets laid off will feel good about it. Getting a respectful, professional termination notice with generous severance is about as good as it gets.
I'm surprised Microsoft 365 and friends don't offer "layoff mode" where you can mark an account as "laid off" and immediately it is read-only and all access to everything is removed except the ability to read one email; the layoff email.
Good in theory, but most people at these companies are accessing their work email through a work-controlled device, and that work device should be locked and inaccessible to employees when they're laid off. So they'd have to log into their work email on a personal device, which if you've set up MFA can be a nightmare, especially if people set up their MFA using a work 1Password/Lastpass/etc account, since they no longer have access to that, either.
Logistically it's a lot easier to just have a personal email on file where you can send the termination notification.
Even the setup that locks a work device (and I feel the dirty secret these days is often people are using personal laptops for work or work laptops for personal use) should be able to display an email-length message.
Yes - anything that locks the device entirely should replace the login screen with a banner - update this basically: https://i.stack.imgur.com/eFcDS.jpg
I know I've seen one with a contact email for if it's lost.
