When IT Support Gets Axed Too

Photo by Kamran Abdullayev @thekamranzadeh on Unsplash

Layoffs. Since I’ve been laid off, I’ve had some time to think about how companies handle them. The logistics of outsourcing an entire engineering department to India is a real leadership challenge. There are so many things to think of that I imagine that it is quite overwhelming.

That is probably the root cause of the issues that have become apparent in this transition for the company.

Focus

The company has a secret project name for this series of layoffs. Project flow, which has been chosen because it describes the flow of information from the “old” staff to the “new” contractors. There are plans and documents about this, about the place, describing the focus of the business.

So, this story is about something that slipped through the gaps. This is something that seems to have been forgotten (along with any pretense of concern for the people being let go).

They hadn’t adequately planned for the return of their equipment.

The Issue

The company, for I think clear reasons, has also fired most of the IT support staff responsible for hardware. Everyone will have the same leaving date.

So, the question is, who will be responsible for handling device returns?

I imagine the leadership meeting went something like this:

👨‍💼 “Wait, who’s going to collect all the laptops?”

👩‍💼 “Uh… IT?”

👨‍💼 “You mean the team we just laid off?”

That’s a real issue. They imagined having a cemetery of laptops, and no capacity to even log which ones have been returned.

The Solution

That’s when the real brilliance hit. Make everyone work from home on their last day so that they could individually courier their laptops back to the office. Because what better way to close out your employment than to be the unpaid logistics coordinator for your own layoff?

👩‍💼 “Oh… right. Uh… let’s just have everyone ship them in themselves.”

👨‍💼 “Brilliant! That’ll be their problem, not ours!”

It was a last-minute solution. So last minute that they were not able to organize shipping for my laptop for that last day.

Once I was laid off, the last thing I wanted to do was deal with the return of my ex-companies equipment. Unfortunately, this is what I needed to deal with.

Conclusion

I always had faith in my company’s leadership to do a good job, and to look after the employees. They had a value to represent that, and I thought that they would live according to that value.

Then I saw how well the company’s leadership was prepared for layoffs. The truth is that they weren’t.