Last week Australian company Canva announced what they called ‘the most difficult decision in their history’: laying off or displacing almost 22% of their workforce, which amounts to 1271 individual workers, or one in five employees.
The Wider Impact of Redundancies on Workplace Culture
And I want to pause on that ‘one in five employees’ bit.
One in five means that potentially every remaining employee knows a handful of people whose job doesn’t exist anymore. It’s a heavy blow for the company culture to take.
It seems like Canva is carefully considering how they can do the right thing by the employees they are letting go, and they are also being asked by the union to be more transparent about what role AI played in their decision. But again, that’s not what I want to focus on here.
The Employees Left Behind: The Human Side of Organisational Change
My background in change management immediately makes me think about the aftermath of this change for the people that are left behind. The ‘survivors’.
Change is fertile ground for strong emotions: guilt, anxiety, anger, relief, fear, uncertainty. The humans left behind would be faced with all or some of those emotions:
What happens to my team? And how about the colleagues, friends, mentors, etc I’m losing?
Will I be next? Can I relax yet?
Will my role change? Will my workload increase?
What does it mean about my future here? Will there be less opportunities?
Having questions like these on one’s mind impacts work decisions. Impacts morale and culture and performance. While the business needs them to perform, possibly more than ever.
Why Businesses Need to Support Employees Through Change
I’m thinking about these things for a piece I’m writing about the human impact of AI-related organisational change, and I’d value hearing about your experience with change.
If you’ve been through a round of redundancies or significant restructure in recent times, either as an employee or a leader, what did you notice about the anxiety among the people who stayed? About the changes in team morale or performance? What changed about how people behaved after redundancies?
If you’re comfortable sharing, send me a message. I’ll treat anything you tell me in confidence, of course. I think it’s so important to have these conversations and I’d love to have them with you.
