There’s never a good way to do layoffs; even in the best of such terrible circumstances, no one ends the day feeling great. But there’s got to be a better way than PowerWash Simulator developer FuturLab reportedly did them recently, where sources claim team leaders weren’t even told why their employees were gone.
According to a report by This Week In Videogames, seven people were let go from FuturLab after the cancellation of a project that had been in development for a few years, and which was not related to PowerWash Simulator. This happens! What tends not to happen is that, according to a source, “managers and team leads were not informed that their direct reports were going to be away or why.” Once it became known that the seven workers were no longer with the company, sources say that remaining FuturLab employees were told to call them “the leavers” and to avoid using the word “redundancy.”
TWIV writes that
Staff were also reportedly told that managers and team leads were “not included in choosing the affected individuals to not give them any of the guilt,” and that the redundancies were conducted in this way to prevent staff from enduring “the stress of not knowing their job security for the two weeks of the process.”
FuturLab CEO Kirsty Rigden confirmed to TWIV that seven workers had left the company, telling the outlet in a statement that “seven people have left the business” due to the cancelled project. “This is awful as these are people who are super talented and many of whom have been with us a long time, and I really really appreciate them,” Rigden said. “This was not an easy or quick decision to make.” FuturLab would not confirm to TWIV that the people had left due to layoffs, with the company saying it was “unable to divulge any further details about a confidential and legally binding process.”
I have been fortunate enough in my leadership career to never have to conduct layoffs, though I’ve been in situations where I’ve lain awake at night wrestling with how I would do them if upper management demanded it. Surprise: It would suck and I would feel bad! So there’s part of me that can understand the thinking of cutting managers and team leads out of the process, especially if it’s not their call. But to reportedly be completely in the dark wouldn't spare me any “guilt;” I’d feel like a bad leader if I didn’t know what was happening to my people. And even if it wasn’t my decision, I’d still feel the responsibility to look my people in the eye and deliver the news myself, particularly if, as Rigden told TWIV, they’d been with the studio a long time.
Beyond that, instructing employees not to say that laid-off workers were laid off makes no sense. What is FuturLab trying to accomplish by pushing the idea that seven people just left at once after their project was canceled? Rigden calls it a “decision,” so clearly it wasn’t some weird coincidence. Layoffs affect workers who didn’t lose their jobs, as well as those who did; the people remaining at the company deserve an honest accounting of what happened and the ability to talk about it freely with their colleagues.
Nobody likes layoffs, and I am even soft-hearted enough to believe that the people who decide to do them don’t take any pleasure in the task, despite the game industry’s repeated proof to the contrary. But to deny leaders the chance to be good leaders, even when those decisions are made over their heads, and to deny affected workers’ colleagues the ability to acknowledge what happened, is a new low.
Maddie Agne
