I don't understand why the firings are waves. Is this a logistics thing, or a morale thing somehow? Because it seems like it would negatively impact morale, more than anything.

In either case, don't feel obligated to answer given the current circumstances. I'm sorry this is happening to you and your company. I'm sending you and the other workers good wishes.

The logistics. In the best of times it takes at least a week to let go a few thousand employees. I can think of about ten things to take care of. Now multiply that with number of countries, the local laws to be handled. Add another multiplier or two for being a public company. The PR angle. And finally the unprecedented COVID-19 situation we are in, which compounds by adding a few more variables, the least of which is remote coordination.

All said and done, I’m actually impressed they got through this in under a month.

At Lehman Brothers, the waves came every few weeks. On Tuesdays, HR fired business people, and engineering people cleaned up the mess. On Wednesdays, HR fired engineering people. On Thursdays, HR fired each other.

It allows you to ramp down without pandemonium.

I don't know whether it's an urban legend or not, some HR people were asked to write their own emails firing themselves at Lehman.

If you broke labor laws while laying yourself off, would it be grounds to sue the company afterward since the actions were taken by an employee of the company?

It's a funny thought, but I have to think it'd get noticed pretty quickly that you're suing the company for something you actually did, and it'd be dismissed pretty quickly.

It'd be fun to negotiate your own exit package in that situation though :-D

A few years ago I worked at a small-ish company that had to do a mass layoff of about 10% of their employees. The only HR person had to write her own layoff letter. A few days later she had to walk back her own layoff because the company realized they probably shouldn't layoff their only HR person during a mass layoff.

I feel like a skilled HR professional probably could have communicated the error of this decision before it was taken.

Jeez, I hope they remembered to declare their base class destructor virtual.

The leadership team has repeatedly said they acknowledge it sucks to leave people hanging for weeks on end since it obviously drags morale through the mud, but that the logistics are complicated, due to the sheer number of people involved, local laws, etc. The leaks have just made it all the more stressful.

For the layoffs last year I'm pretty sure they were trying to stay under the 500-employee threshold of the WARN Act.