Boeing names a new chief executive amid struggles, Bungie layoffs take employees by surprise
Plus, a study reveals that some RTO mandates were designed to make employees quit.
Greetings, comms pros! Let’s take a look at a few news stories from the last week and see what we can learn from them.
1 . Boeing installs a new CEO as rough year wears on
Boeing is in the news again, but this time it’s for something that can be shared more positively than plane incidents or shoddy workplace conditions — the company is pushing forward with a new CEO. Earlier this week, Boeing named Robert “Kelly” Ortberg its new CEO, replacing embattled leader Dave Calhoun.
“I’m extremely honored and humbled to join this iconic company,” said Ortberg in a statement from the company. “Boeing has a tremendous and rich history as a leader and pioneer in our industry, and I’m committed to working together with the more than 170,000 dedicated employees of the company to continue that tradition, with safety and quality at the forefront.”
Will a change in leadership alter Boeing’s fortunes after a less-than-stellar 2024 so far? Perhaps not immediately, but this offers the aerospace company a chance to reframe the path forward with positivity and a different tone. Calhoun has been playing defense in the public eye and fighting off bad perceptions of employee treatment at Boeing, and Ortberg has a chance to change all that through communicating his experience in the systems manufacturing space—an opportunity for Boeing to get right since it announced plans to acquire Spirit Aerosystems in early July.
We’ll be watching to see if the framing of future executive communications increasingly includes details about frontline employees and manager comms in the months ahead Boeing.
2. Bungie employees learn about layoffs on social media
Bungie, the developer of classic games including Halo, cut 17% of its workforce. Despite a round of layoffs last fall, this announcement came as a complete shock to some staffers.
Tzivi Sherman, a sound designer at Bungie for more than two years, said he found out about the layoffs from Bungie’s corporate Twitter account in a post on X. He found out his role was impacted shortly after.
“Saw the tweet then about 45 minutes later got an email with a meeting request and an ominous title,” Sherman told TechCrunch.
Although Sherman found out scrolling through social media, he says he’s been waiting for the other shoe to drop ever since Bungie’s layoffs in October.
“It kind of feels like [upper management] is being very two-faced about it,” said Guilhem Lagarde, a product support technician at Bungie affected by Wednesday’s layoffs, in an interview with TechCrunch. “Like they’re telling us one thing, but behind the scenes, something else is happening.”
In today’s economy, layoffs are an unfortunate reality. But how they’re communicated—and who finds out first—can have a lasting impact on your corporate reputation. It’s unacceptable for an employee to see a public tweet about their company conducting layoffs and then get an email about it nearly an hour later.
This lack of communication will be seen as duplicitous by some employees, and going by these quotes, Bungie’s handling of its announcement certainly was.
Telling employees they’re out of a job isn’t easy, but there’s a right and a wrong way to do it. Treat people with empathy and respect, and make sure you get the message across to them before they learn about it from an outside source.
3. Study: Some return-to-office policies were made to make people quit
For some employees, a return-to-office (RTO) mandate might serve as an annoying upending of their routines developed while working from home. However, according to a study from BambooHR, some return-to-office initiatives were designed to be so inconvenient they’d force people to quit.
The study reported that 18% of HR pros and 25% of leaders hoped for “voluntary turnover” during RTO mandates, which is a fancy way of saying that the mandates are forcing people to quit.
This is all about perception. Instituting an RTO policy in the name of collaboration and culture is fully within your right as an organization. But to hope that your employees, the people who make your organization’s culture real, voluntarily leave so you can get people into their desks for whatever reason you’ve identified? That’s a bleak approach that’s incompatible with the values of transparency and compassion that keep top talent from leaving.
4. How about some good news?
- Researchers found that tree bark is key in removing methane from the atmosphere.
- Divers discovered an ancient Roman mosaic under the sea off the coast of Italy.
- A horse in Canada was reunited with its family after going missing for days.
- 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.
