Laid-off workers call process 'inhumane' and 'disheartening'
Recently, Canada Goose announced it was laying off workers — and it did so via email, according to a report.
On March 25, the outerwear company told employees via email not to come into work the following day.
Shortly after 9 a.m. on March 26, employees received one email from CEO Dani Reiss, which laid out the company’s restructuring plans, and another email, from the company’s HR department, which contained notices of termination for those who were being laid off.
Conducting the layoffs in such a way was “inhumane,” and “disheartening”, three workers told Global News.
“Being terminated after years of being successful at your job is traumatic,” one of the laid-off workers said. “It’s being done through emails and you really feel like you’re just a number and you didn’t matter.”
“I was completely shocked and I was truly blindsided,” one former employee said.
Follow-up meeting with HR after getting fired
Every employee affected by the layoffs was invited to schedule a virtual meeting with “a Human Resources Business Partner,” noted Jess Johannson, Canada Goose’s CHRO.
However, expecting people who had just received termination notices to schedule a follow-up meeting with HR was a “traumatic” experience, two workers told Global News.
One of the two workers also claimed they didn’t “get human contact for hours after notice” and human resources was “not proactively reaching out.”
The former employee called it “disheartening”.
“I think they deserved a little bit more sympathy, empathy and a human conversation rather than an electronic communication,” the worker said, according to the Global News report.
In response, Johannson told Global News: “Decisions like this are heartbreaking — we understand the human impact they have, and we know there’s no perfect way to share this kind of news.”
Recently, multinational automotive manufacturing corporation Stellantis conducted “a mass firing of everybody that was on the call” that the company labelled as “important operational meetings,” according to a Fortune report.
Previously, clothing firm Levi Strauss & Co (LS&Co) also announced it is laying off 10% to 15% of its global corporate workforce as part of an ongoing restructure within the organization.
