Job losses

A friend pointed out a verbal fight that broke out at a financial firm. The head of the division has an internal blog, on which he wrote something like "as widely reported, additional job losses will be coming in the next few weeks".

Many people commented on the blog. One person took great umbrage at the word "job losses". Her point was that losses are accidental, mistakes. Because the head of the division was directly responsible for cutting staff, and, as a senior executive, possibly involved with the strategies that led to the debacle that led to the need to cut staff, she felt he was trying to use language to wiggle out of any responsibility. (I can't help but note her "bravery," since her name was posted next to her comment.)

I do have some sympathy for the executive. I think the tone he attempted to convey was the seriousness of the situation. You might say, "I'm sorry for your loss" at a funeral, and the emotions at the firm are funereal.

On the other hand, the whole language around layoffs has gotten far too soft and annoying.

When I started my career, companies regularly called layoffs either layoffs or terminations. Laid off employees regularly stated, "I was fired." If you wanted to be doubly sure no one thought you got canned for cause, you said, "I was laid off."

Since then, execu-speak has gone wild. In the late 80s, we started calling it "downsizing" or "trimming". This parallels the time when workers stopped being people and became "human resources". Later "right-sizing" tried to replace "downsizing", but thankfully failed. Around the turn of the century, "cutting" or "reducing headcount" dominated.

The one I hate the most is "redundancies". To me, the word is a joke. Redundancies occur when two firms merge; as a result, some people are laid off. At some point in just the past few years, it became applicable to all layoffs. If a company decides to cancel a product line and lays off the 500 employees that worked on it, they'll say they had 500 redundancies. Redundancy means you had 2, so you got rid of 1. In these cases, they're left with 0.

The old words remain, but the new words become widely adopted. They seem softer and, because they're impersonal, you can say them without feeling insensitive. And, I do believe that much of their appeal comes from the fact that it indicates that the executive who makes the decision had no responsibility in the matter.

The woman's real message is: if you're going to fire people, own up to it. Hear, hear! Being so wiggly about it can be, in itself, a form of insensitivity.