Cold CompUSA Layoff Letter

It looks like we aren’t going to be seeing any buildings like the one in the U.S. any longer. 

There is an interesting and rather depressing post by Ryan over at endadget that presents a recent (December 10th, 2007) layoff letter that was apparently sent to thousands of CompUSA employees, informing them they were out of a job.  As I’ve written in other places, especially The Knowing -Doing Gap, and at Harvard Online, and talked about in this Wall Street Journal story, a letter that looks like this not only makes the company looks like it has no soul, it also clashes with evidence about the most effective way to implement layoffs.   When layoffs and closings are implemented, they have fewer negative effects (including performance effects) on both victims and survivors when management does it in way that allow people to predict how it will unfold, understand why the decision was made, have some control over how events unfold, and when management expressions compassion to those who lose jobs and suffer other kinds of distressing disruption.  Perhaps CompUSA managers expressed compassion in other ways, but the letter is cold as ice.

This Reuter’s story suggests that they have sold off the assets and are closing all stories, but even under those conditions, management doesn’t need to be so cold.  My dissertation was on the process of organizational death, and I studied how diverse closings were implemented.  Some were quick, cold, and cruel, as seems to be the case with CompUSA.  But others were surprisingly sensitive to displaced employees and their families.