The advantage when we lay off people is that we find a lot of qualified personnel to recruit on the job market.
The downside is that they don’t necessarily want to come back. 2022 and especially 2023 have been terrible years for employment in the world of tech: thus, since January, no less than 350,000 employees in the sector have lost their jobs. If for some companies, the objective was to find profitability at all costs, others justified themselves by the need to make adjustments after having recruited far too much in previous years, particularly during the pandemic.
But Meta and Salesforce may have been a little too heavy-handed when it came time to sign off on any account balances and now their human resources are in an awkward situation: perhaps, after all, some of these ex-employees were necessary for the proper functioning of the business. We will now have to be convincing to make them want to come back.
Ultimately, Meta and Salesforce may have needed their employees
During the first wave of layoffs in 2022, Mark Zuckerberg, grand prince, recognized that the need to reduce costs was largely due to his company’s pharaonic investments in the metaverse, rather than performance. But the justification for the subsequent mass layoffs was quite different: apparently, the company was smoother and more efficient after the first departures, so we might as well repeat the experience.
At Salesforce, the situation is more classic, almost caricatured: after trying to develop a corporate culture that encouraged employees to see themselves as a “ ohana ”, which means family in Hawaiian and could hardly be more cliché, investors have asked management to increase margins and growth (like in any normal family, therefore). This led to departures, sometimes voluntary, often forced, and not always in good conditions.
But now these two companies, which spent time and money training qualified employees, are discovering that those employees may have had value. It is above all the growing need in the field of the development of artificial intelligence which is driving these recruitments. And for the HR department, that means a lot of tricky discussions.
A complicated situation for some ex-employees
From an outside point of view, especially if the dismissal was painful, one could say that these recruiters face almost as many refusals as phone calls. And even if the departure took place under good conditions, the ex-employees have good reasons to have reservations about the security of this new job that is being offered to them.
But agreeing to come back also means having greater negotiating power and therefore probably benefiting from better employment conditions… particularly in terms of salaries. As for the motivation and loyalty of these “new” recruits, we will probably also have to do without.
And inevitably, 350,000 people who lose their jobs do not find another one the next day. It’s likely that, as cynical as these decisions are, Meta and Salesforce will have no problem supplementing their workforces.
Source : Business Insider
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