Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

Microsoft already had a public relations crisis on its hands with Thursday's news that it was laying off 18,000 employees. That's 14 percent of its workforce, and the biggest batch of job cuts in the company's nearly 40-year history.

How it's communicating those layoffs to employees doesn't seem to be helping matters. Microsoft published the email from Stephen Elop, head of Microsoft's devices unit, to about 12,500 laid-off employees. The lion's share of the employees who are losing jobs come from his department.

The memo begins, "Hello there," ends with "Regards," and is loaded with business jargon. Terms such as "financial envelope," "business continuity," and "right-size our manufacturing operations" are peppered throughout. Worse, it barely makes clear that its recipients have been discharged. It's mostly about the company's new strategy to make and sell Windows phones, which wouldn't seem a primary concern for people who no longer work for Microsoft....

Dominick's is (or was) a chain of food stores in the Chicago area that dates back to 1918.  The outfit has gone through several changes of ownership and in 1998 it was bought by Safeway.  Apparently things haven't been going that well because Safeway announced a couple months ago that they would be closing 72 Dominick's stores and laying off more than 6000 people on December 28th.

One of the employees about to get canned -- a young fellow named Steve Yamato --  made a humorous SciFi video which showed dragons, monsters, asteroids etc squashing Dominick's employees and he titled the mini flick: "Thanks Safeway."  Then he posted it on YouTube.

When Yamamoto arrived for his last day of work -- he was told that he was suspended.  Huh?  He (and 6600 other people) were going to be cashiered anyway - but Safeway decided to mop the floor with him as an example for remaining employees perhaps...