Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

Joel Gascoigne, CEO of social media tool startup Buffer, shared a 3500-word post in which he explains why he’s laying off 10 of his 94 employees. In contrast to bloodless posts from the likes of Inteland Microsoft, it indulges a different sin: oversharing.

A lot of my correspondents forwarded Gascoigne’s post to me, hoping I’d praise it because it is so different from the other CEO communications  I’ve shared. And there is a lot to like here: it’s extremely open, fair, and honest. Gascoigne is living his sincere promise to be transparent.

But a CEO should be communicating the realities of his or her business regularly, not dropping it all at once in a 3500-word lump along with a layoff. What a team wants from their CEO is to share what’s relevant, not to share everything. This is a good example of how it’s possible to overdo transparency....

The chain reportedly asked managers to categorize employees as "green," "yellow" or "red," for targeting layoffs. Communication experts say the system is flawed....

In January, 5,500 Penney in-store employees were laid off. Another 300 jobs were cut at its headquarters in Plano, Texas. This isn't the first case of a company's using traffic-light colors as code for an employee's status. In 2010, telecommunications company Everything Everywhere faced harsh criticism for indicating whether employees could be laid off or not with red and green visual aids given in informational packets. JC Penney isn't disclosing the light system to store employees, but communicators say this idea is just as bad....

Electronics retailer Best Buy prides itself on its low prices and customer service. Unfortunately, that care didn’t extend to its employees with the closure of 15 stores and 900 employee layoffs in Canada.

Like many consumers, I wasn’t surprised to see Best Buy and Future Shop store closures.

Analysts expect Best Buy to close another 200 to 250 of its 1,056 US stores in 2013....