Starbucks issues RTO ultimatum, Volkswagen warns of job cuts despite past commitments to avoid them.

Greetings, comms pros! Let’s take a look at a few news stories from the past week and see what we can learn from them.

1. Starbucks mandates RTO and threatens layoffs

America’s most ubiquitous coffee chain is giving its employees a choice: return to their office posts or lose their jobs.

A report from Bloomberg News said that the company is calling employees back to their desks at least three days a week and standardizing the process of in-office attendance. A lack of compliance will reportedly include “consequences” up to and including “separation”.

“We are continuing to support our leaders as they hold their teams accountable to our existing hybrid work policy,” the memo from Starbucks obtained by Bloomberg said.

This move comes a month after new CEO Brian Niccol hinted that he preferred employees to be physically present in the office.

According to the Los Angeles Daily News:

“This is not a game of tracking. This is a game of winning,” said Niccol, who was hired to turn around the company as it reels from sales declines. “I care about seeing everybody here succeed, and if success requires us being together more often than not, let’s be together more often.”

Calling employees back to the office, in and of itself, is fine. It’s part of the right of the employer. But the key lies in how it’s done. Are there support systems in place for employees to make necessary childcare or other arrangements? What about people who need to uproot their lives to be in the office? It’s your job to ask these tough questions while the plan is being built and share the answers with your workforce.

An effective RTO begins with good leadership and a focus on culture. While Niccol says the right things, threatening to fire the people who make up your culture over an RTO mandate on short notice is a loss for the employer brand. Starbucks might be a big enough brand where this sort of move won’t affect customer habits, but it might put a dent in recruitment and retention.

 2. Volkswagen workers’ union responds to a warning of an imminent restructuring

When one thinks of German brands, there are few more iconic than Volkswagen. But the automaker is telling employees to brace for layoffs amid discussions with labor unions in Germany over the need for changes to the business.

According to Reuters:

“Management is absolutely serious about all this. This is not sabre-rattling in the collective bargaining round,” Daniela Cavallo, Volkswagen’s works council head, told employees at the carmaker’s biggest plant, in Wolfsburg, threatening to break off talks.

“This is the plan of Germany’s largest industrial group to start the sell-off in its home country of Germany,” Cavallo added, not specifying which plants would be affected or how many of Volkswagen Group’s roughly 300,000 staff in Germany could be laid off.

Union representatives responded with forceful words.

“If VW confirms its dystopian path on Wednesday, the board must expect the corresponding consequences on our part,” the IG Metall union’s negotiator Thorsten Groeger said, vowing fierce resistance.

Under German law, the unions are allowed to strike beginning December 1 as they hold half the seats on the company’s advisory board.

Union comms aren’t easy, but they’re necessary to maintain a good standing in the eyes of employees and the general public. We wrote about another union-related issue at Volkswagen earlier this year, and our takeaways from that piece still ring true.

• Acknowledge the rights of workers to protest and strike.
• Align your comms efforts with your mission and values.
• Prepare your leaders so they know what talking points to lean into and what to avoid.

Union comms are complex, but sticking to those three main concepts can make life a lot easier for a communicator.

 3. Dropbox cuts 20% of workers

Cloud storage mainstay Dropbox is letting go of over 500 workers, with CEO Drew Houston claiming the company needed a restructure. Houston was apologetic to affected workers in a blog post on the Dropbox site, citing a need for a more streamlined company structure that he hopes will lead to better performance.

We continue to see softening demand and macro headwinds in our core business. But external factors are only part of the story. We’ve heard from many of you that our organizational structure has become overly complex, with excess layers of management slowing us down.

And while I’m proud of the progress we’ve made in the last couple years, in some parts of the business, we’re still not delivering at the level our customers deserve or performing in line with industry peers. So we’re making more significant cuts in areas where we’re over-invested or underperforming while designing a flatter, more efficient team structure overall.

Layoffs aren’t fun, and there is a right and wrong way to do them. Houston’s memo hits the right notes in a tough moment. He’s clear about the move, empathetic to those affected, and charts a path forward. During tough times, the best leaders can step up and show that they’ve got a handle on the company and that they’re human beings with feelings and a sense of care for those who lost their jobs.

If you’re planning messaging around an upcoming layoff, you could do a lot worse than taking a leaf from Drew Houston’s book.

4. How about some good news?

• A 2,000-year-old house was uncovered in the ruins of Pompeii.
• A 17-year-old was rescued after clinging to a kayak in rough seas for 12 hours.
• New York State hit its solar power goals a year ahead of schedule.
• Ragan Training is great for communications pros to find inspiration and resources.
• You should be rewarded for your work. Find out how to earn an award here!

Have a great weekend comms all-stars!

Sean Devlin is an editor at Ragan Communications. In his spare time he enjoys Philly sports, a good pint and ’90s trivia night.