Severence

There was a time when layoffs were treated as a last resort. A painful but necessary decision, made reluctantly. Or an outcome of deep structural change, economic downturn, or strategic pivot.

Now, they’re starting to look more like a performance lever. A line in the earnings call to assure shareholders that action has been taken. A signal that leadership is ‘serious’. A data point in the story companies tell to the market.

Layoffs have become a kind of shorthand, proof that a company is trimming fat, refocusing, getting lean. They are announced with language designed to manage emotion like “streamlining”, “efficiency”, “realignment”, “future-focused”…

But behind the language are people. Whole teams, often highly capable ones, removed in the name of optimisation.

The layoffs weren’t framed as a painful recalibration. They were presented as a lever. A data point. A mark of discipline. And I’ve been thinking about that a lot, what it means when layoffs themselves become part of how performance is communicated to shareholders, the press, even internally.

The risk isn't just the act of layoffs itself. Sometimes restructures are necessary. And sometimes headcount really is out of sync with revenue. The danger is in what happens when reductions in force becomes part of the performance narrative. Because when layoffs are used to demonstrate discipline, rather than as the consequence of a thoughtful strategy, something important gets lost:

• The understanding that organisations are made of people, not just cost centres

• That institutional knowledge, cultural trust, and operational continuity have value, even if they don’t show up on a spreadsheet

• That the person holding a team together emotionally isn’t always the loudest voice in the room…. but they’re the one you miss the most once they’re gone.

In the last few years, this pattern has accelerated across industries.

Tech. Advertising. Finance.

And most recently, at WPP, where around 4,000 roles were cut under the banner of simplification and efficiency. 

These decisions may look clean on paper. But they have aftershocks. Not just for those who leave, but for those who remain.
Trust erodes.
Morale sinks.
The work continues, but it feels different.

Less grounded, more transactional.

But in a system where performance must be continuously signalled, especially like in holding companies pressured by short-term results — layoffs are easy to justify. They make a clear line on a graph. They’re easy to frame, harder to feel. And they give ‘leaders’ something to point to when asked what’s being done.

What worries me is that we’re normalising it. The frequency. The framing. The emotional flatness. And behind all of it, the message that removal is proof of control.

Layoffs may reduce cost. But they also reduce memory. And when an organisation forgets what made it stable in the first place, it starts solving for noise instead of longevity.

The irony is that many of the people being let go aren’t low performers. They’re often the ones doing invisible work. Bridging silos. Mentoring juniors. Sensing tensions before they escalate. Work that doesn’t easily convert into metrics, but keeps the engine running.

We need to be honest.  Layoffs are not always a sign of failure. But they are never a neutral act.

And when they are used as a metric of decisiveness or strength, we should ask ourselves what else is being removed that we’ll only realise mattered once it’s gone.

Not every decision that looks clean on paper feels clean in practice.