Airbnb boss Brian Chesky says he personally called CEOs he knew to ask if they could hire the thousands of staff he laid off during the pandemic
Eugene Gologursky/Getty Images for Fast Company.
- Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky made the tough decision to lay off 1,900 staff during the pandemic.
- Chesky made an alumni directory for laid off Airbnb staff so recruiters could connect with them.
- He said in The Diary of a CEO podcast that the layoffs were like "breaking up with 2,500 people."
Airbnb's CEO Brian Chesky made the tough decision to lay off 1,900 staff during the pandemic and he took a personal hand in helping employees secure jobs after, he said in The Diary of a CEO podcast with Steven Bartlett.
Chesky, who cofounded Airbnb in 2008, told Bartlett that the company was slammed by the COVID-19 pandemic as travel came to a halt due to the lockdowns requiring people to stay in their homes. As a result the company had to lay off 25% of its workforce to cut costs.
Chesky explained to Bartlett that he wanted people to leave with "dignity" and have the chance to get good roles.
"We created an alumni directory where if you were laid off, you could opt into a public directory, we publish your information, and we point recruiters to your information," he said. "We ended up getting hundreds of thousands of recruiters and people visiting those profiles and a lot of those people got rehired."
He added: "This is how I want to be remembered. I only remember that when I'm in peril, we're in our darkest hour, I'm not just worrying about how we will survive, I'm trying to call CEOs of other companies to see if they can hire our people."
When describing the layoffs, Chesky said it was like "breaking up with 2,500 people," and said that he had a "deep feeling of love for all of them," referring to his employees.
During its pandemic layoffs, Airbnb's severance packages were substantial. Laid off staff received 14 weeks of base pay plus an additional week for each year they spent at the company; a year of health insurance cover; four months of mental health support, and they were also able to keep their company-issued laptops.
Chesky told Bartlett that after he sent the email about the layoffs to staff, he received hundreds of 'thank you' letters from people who had been let go, not just because of the generous benefits but because he conducted the layoffs with respect.
Chesky's approach stands in contrast to some other, more brutal recent tech layoffs, most notably the swift, sometimes chaotic layoffs at what was then Twitter after it was taken over by billionaire Elon Musk.
After Musk bought X in October 2022, he laid off 3,700 staff with little notice, with many only finding out they'd lost their jobs after their access to Slack and their work laptops were cut off.
Software giant Salesforce is another firm to receive criticism for recent layoffs, with some staff complaining about what they saw as poor communication about the cuts, with some finding out while on vacation or through colleagues. "It's like checking the missing bulletin board after a major disaster," one employee said at the time.
from Business Insider https://ift.tt/0zfV9JX
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