4. Intuit
HR fail: Blame shifting
What happened?
Intuit CEO Sasan Goodarzi last week emailed staff to inform them that 1,800 of them would soon be without a job.
1,050 of these employees are “not meeting expectations”, he wrote. The cuts, which amount to 10% of the business software vendor’s workforce, come amid efforts to “accelerate our innovation and investments in the areas that are most important to our future success”, Goodarzi said.
Intuit expects to hire a nearly equivalent number of employees in fiscal 2025, an accompanying SEC filing stressed.
Why the backlash?
Goodarzi’s missive went viral for all the wrong reasons, with critics accusing him of down-punching and shifting blame.
LinkedIn influencer and talent acquisition expert Jan Tegze described it as “the most tone-deaf layoff announcement I’ve seen for years”.
Branding most of the staff unlucky enough to have been impacted “underperformers” is “career damaging”, while the email lacked self-reflection on leadership’s role in employee performance, Tegze argued.
Controversial quote
“We’ve significantly raised the bar on our expectations of employee performance, resulting in approximately 1,050 employees leaving the company who are not meeting expectations and who we believe will be more successful outside of Intuit.”
Blowback rating: 8/10
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