<aside>

💡 This checklist was put together after watching many companies do layoffs, both exquisitely and terribly.

On the lefthand side, you will find a checklist of all the things you must do in order to execute the RIF as smoothly as possible.

On the righthand side, you will find guidance, a script, and advice from CEOs of some of the best startups in the world - please follow it.

Good luck - RIFs are hard, but they don’t have to be harder than they already are!

-Regina

</aside>

Pre-layoff checklist

• [ ] CEO: Determine list of impacted employees and finalize. Share with leaders.
• [ ] Ops: Pull severance numbers and health benefits for each impacted employee.
• [ ] Ops/Legal: Determine if there are any considerations to make for visa requirements, 401ks, etc.
• [ ] Ops: Create FAQ doc policy, and make sure all answers are clear
• [ ] Legal: Create separation agreements (signature required for severance package; check with local laws to make sure this is OK)
• [ ] Legal: Create script to share with impacted employees to explain next steps (wipe your laptop before you keep it, we will be sending you your package once you sign these documents)
• [ ] Legal: Create a policy where employees let us release info so we can help them place jobs
• [ ] Ops: Ensure that last paycheck payments are ready to go (must be paid within 24 hours of termination for many states, and in general is just good policy to follow regardless of legality)
• [ ] CEO: Determine a narrative to retain current team during All Hands and beyond (why this, why now)

Impacted Employees

• [ ] Notify all impacted employees first, in 1-1s that are stacked back-to-back with each other.
  • Each employee should be informed by the CEO or their direct manager if the company is very large.
  • Ideally, the CEO would be able to meet every person who is impacted for a 10-min 1-1 before they leave.
  • Invitations to those 1-1s should go out the day-of in the morning, so there isn’t anxiety breeding from anticipation of the short 1-1.
  • DO NOT let impacted employees find out in a group where there are non-impacted people. This causes shame and embarrassment. Instead, let them find out either in a group with all impacted people if your company is large, or in a short 1-1 between them and the CEO.
• [ ] EA should immediately deactivate Slack/Google account after every 1-1
• [ ] Legal should send a Separation Agreement immediately after every 1-1 meeting (need to have personal email address ready on file)

Rest of the team

• [ ] Once all impacted employees are informed, then you can inform the rest of the team.
• [ ] Once all impacted folk 1-1s are done, CEO can send a message to the rest of the non-impacted company explaining the difficult decision made, and share all impacted employees have already had 1-1s with the CEO. Schedule an All Hands later that day for everyone to attend.
• [ ] All public comms to go out afterwards (e.g. twitter, blog post, etc.)

Severance Guidance

• Typically, 3 months severance is considered generous, plus an additional 2 weeks for every year of employment beyond 1 year to honor tenure. Some companies choose to honor bonuses based on employment contract, or for salaries where bonus is a large consideration of employment such as sales.
• Consider waiving cliff where applicable and/or accelerating vesting up to the year - includes both initial grants and follow-up grants
• Consider letting them keep their laptop so they can do job search
• Each member of the leadership team should agree to extend their networks to help with job search (see script below)

Script for impacted employees

• Today is your last day
• Thank you for your contributions and everything you’ve done for the company
• We are in war-time and this decision was very difficult and it has nothing to do with your performance or your character. We had to do this if we want to have a fighting chance at winning.
• Here’s what’s going to happen:
  • We’re going to give you x severance, waiving cliff, equity, and you will still have healthcare through COBRA (if applicable)
  • I also want to be your personal agent - the company and I will say nothing but great things about you and give you glowing recommendations anywhere you go
  • Exercise my network to help you find your next role
• I imagine you must be feeling … (confusion, sadness, frustration, anger) and I completely understand
• Now I want to hold space for you to ask any questions if you have any - and if now you don’t at the moment but you do later, please let us know.

Advice from previous CEOs who have done this

• What to do:
  • Give everyone a 10-min 1:1 to exit them. This makes it a personal conversation.
  • Offer to help displaced workers by giving them career advice and giving great letters of references.
  • A script to try: “Your job is impacted. But I value you as a human being. So I’d like to personally offer career advice to you, and also exercise my network and help you find your new role. If you ever want to discuss this, please let me know and I will connect you with anyone in my network.”
  • If you have only a few functions (<7), go to the impacted people in small groups that are department-focused and talk about what happened, rationale behind it, and opportunity for the company. This helps since once you talk about it in All Hands, everyone already knows because of the smaller conversations. Most questions get answered after that, so there is nothing left at AH.
• What not to do:
  • Don’t do a recording. That’s not compassionate.
  • Don’t be ambiguous in what they should expect next. Explicitly outline what’s going to happen.
  • Don’t be flimsy. Be compassionate but firm.
  • Don’t let them learn about it for the first time in the group. This is the thing that causes the most shame.
  • Don’t do layoffs on a constant basis. Layoffs are still trauma to the company. See organizations that let go of the bottom 10% of the company every year. This leads to people constantly throwing each other under the bus.

Regina Gerbeaux (@_rpgbx) is an executive coach to some of the fastest scaling startups in the world. Prior to that, she was COO of companyOS/Mochary Method, Chief of Staff to Matt Mochary, and Head of Operations at On Deck.

Regina was the first person Matt taught to coach using his coaching methodology. She now enjoys open-sourcing her write-ups about operational excellence and providing tactical templates and frameworks to use from an operator point of view. If you are interested in getting coached by her, reach out here.

If she’s not busy making Notion templates, reading, writing, eating, or sleeping, you can find her likely at a 6am Orangetheory class, out on a hike, or on Twitter (or writing about herself in the third person and trying not to get weirded out by it. Like right now.)