How to Manage Your Company Brand on Social Media During Layoffs

As layoffs and other reductions in force (RIFs) become increasingly frequent in today’s technologically advanced and interconnected world, it’s more important than ever to manage the significant impact they can have on your company’s brand and online presence. Social media is a front line for any brand’s image. When holding layoffs, the company’s social media presence should reflect the same empathy and honesty necessary for internal communications to the impacted employees themselves.

In this article, we will explore why you need a social media policy specifically for layoffs and how to most effectively create, implement, and review this policy to protect your company culture and brand through any challenging reduction events.

What is a social media policy? Simply put, it is a company code of conduct that provides guidelines for employees when posting content on the internet, either as part of their job or as a private person. Most companies have a broad, all-encompassing social media policy, which is a great business practice. However, we also recommend developing a more specific social media policy that is designed to manage social chatter resulting from workforce reduction events.

This is essential to include in your layoff and outplacement strategy because online employer branding is becoming increasingly important due to the pervasiveness and permanence of the internet. It has become essential to have a policy in place that can help preserve your company’s online presence. The goal is to avoid any negative posts popping up on Google when a potential customer or employee searches for a review of your company.

Now let’s break down the process of creating a layoff social media policy for your organization so that you’re prepared to manage the online impact of any future reduction events. There are a few essential steps to follow to make sure you craft the most thorough and thoughtful social media policy possible to help you navigate the difficult layoff process and its impact on your online brand.

The first step for your layoff social media policy is to conduct some sort of analysis of future layoff events and their potential impact on the company’s online presence and reputation. Below are some helpful questions to consider as you conduct your layoff impact analysis and craft your own layoff social media policy.

Example: LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and Glassdoor.

Example: Local employees impacted by the layoffs, local community members, and employees who manage company social media channels.

Example: Designated internal employees.

The next step is to incorporate this analysis into a clear social media policy with procedures for how people should engage online before, during, and after a layoff event. You will need to develop a plan for each group of people that will be impacted.

When laying off employees, the termination agreement typically includes a confidentiality agreement. It’s a good idea to include language in this section that prohibits or restricts the nature of how outgoing employees can speak about their separation from the company to any member of the public in-person or online.

If you need help navigating these termination agreements and other key parts of the layoff process, click below to download our free complete layoff guide to make sure you’re fully prepared your next reduction event.

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It’s a bit trickier with internal employees, as you cannot prohibit them from engaging in online spaces. However, you can advise them on the company policy for engaging online during a layoff, such as ensuring their actions are work appropriate, reflect well on the company, and don’t violate the privacy of others. You can also require that they report any relevant online mentions or posts they engage with to a designated HR contact, or provide this contact information to anyone who expresses grievances against the company.

This is the most critical group from a liability perspective, since they are representing the company online. You should outline clear guidelines for how they can respond to social media content, especially from people who are upset with the company. In these situations, we recommend not deleting these comments or denying the feelings expressed in them, which could damage trust. It’s also important to avoid admitting liability on the company’s behalf in any way.

Instead, the employee can respond to a grievance by apologizing for the person’s feelings, and then asking them to move the conversation to a private channel. This way the conversation isn’t public to everyone on the platform, and no one’s privacy is violated. However, what is then said in the private channel is still important, because a person could easily take screenshots of the conversation.

There should also be guidelines on warranted responses if a person continues engaging in the public thread and won’t move the conversation to a private channel. Of course, if a comment ever violates someone’s privacy or uses inappropriate language, a screenshot should be taken for company record before hiding/deleting it from public view.

It is imperative that you communicate your new layoff social media policy to all of the stakeholders at your organization. We recommend requiring a one-time training session for all employees, as well as training updates to various stakeholders based on specific layoff events. For example, if you are holding a layoff in your Atlanta office, those employees would need to be updated on the policy after the initial company-wide training.

Once a layoff event is planned, company stakeholders and employees managing social media channels need to communicate about the timing of the layoff announcements. This allows social media managers to review any coinciding online content and create an alternative content plan if necessary. 

It may be a good idea to pause or postpone previously scheduled online content during a layoff. Some content, such as the categories below, may not be appropriate to share while a layoff or other workforce reduction is impending or ongoing.

• New hire announcements: Avoid announcing new hires on social media for at least a week after layoffs, which can appear insensitive and invite unwanted comments about the recent workforce reductions.
• Job openings and hiring: Posting about career opportunities during or too soon after layoffs comes with similar risks, even if the layoffs were intended to shift hiring to different business areas.
• Employee advocacy: Employee spotlights, anniversary posts, and other employee content should be handled carefully during this period. Surviving employees who were not laid off will need time to process, and posting this type of content could have the opposite of the desired impact.
• Executive promotions, bonuses, or honors: Exercise caution when posting about executive activities during a layoff cycle. This is not the time for the leadership team to take the spotlight, especially given their involvement in the layoff decision making.

Plan on pausing this content for at least a week, though some specific content may be valuable to pause for a more extended period. Employees and stakeholders should discuss what makes sense in the context of the company.

As your layoff event becomes public, it’s imperative that your company takes a proactive approach in responding to the various online reactions to your layoff event. This means catching any related mentions online as soon as possible. We recommend using the following online monitoring tools and tricks to look for social chatter and content about the layoff and your brand, and then respond using the prescribed plans.

One easy method to implement is setting up Google alerts that will send you notifications every time any variation (including common misspellings) of your company name is mentioned anywhere online.

We also recommend using social listening tools such as Hootsuite, which has a free version and is very user-friendly. There are many of these tools available, so make sure to do your own research and ask your marketing team for advice. Pick one and use it to monitor specific online communities and channels likely to get comments, such as the social media handles of your leadership team, impacted employees, customers, and competitors.

If you anticipate any negative news coverage or commentary, it’s a good idea to monitor the publications where this might occur. There may not be much you can do to prevent a negative news cycle, but being aware of what’s said is still crucial.

Plan on continuing this high-alert approach of online monitoring for at least one week, or longer if appropriate for some of the keyword alerts set up prior to the layoff announcements. This monitoring strategy allows your team to be proactive in responding to negative chatter, so that you can control the narrative. It can also help improve your company brand by showing online communities that you care about addressing grievances.

As you identify online chatter related to your brand and layoff event, your social media policy should clearly outline guidelines for prompt and proper responses. Speed and transparency help maintain community trust in your company brand. If someone tweets about a grievance and it takes six weeks for you to get back to them, that could make your company look inauthentic, bureaucratic, and unempathetic.

While being timely is important, having a poor response is a surefire way to ignite a larger digital bonfire. It’s easy to get caught up in the moment on social media, leading you to say something you probably shouldn’t. The examples below are polite and forthright responses that offer the person a path forward to resolve the issue.

• “Hey Bob, we are so sorry about this. We would like to chat with you about making it right. Please direct message our page so that we can start a conversation about it.”
• “Sarah, we are sorry to hear about how your cousin has been impacted by our recent layoffs. Please direct message our company page so that I can provide you with the email address of our HR team. Your cousin can use this to discuss his severance benefits with someone in our organization.”

When responding to these online comments and complaints, it’s also important to demonstrate a willingness to address the problems as best as you can. This means having a cross-collaborative team ready to take action to handle different situations, including people from your HR and marketing teams.

HR team members can provide expertise about benefits and compliance, while the marketing team can help with tool functionality. Ask department leaders who they think would be a good fit for this cross-collaborative team and make sure it’s representative of the size of your layoff and your employees’ demographics.

After the layoff or reduction in force (RIF) is over, your employees and stakeholders should meet again to review the online impact, determine the timing for resuming regular social media activity, and discuss any important insights gathered from social listening. This provides a great opportunity to review and revise your layoff social media policy with any lessons learned or best practices discovered.

Another important step to take at this point is to review any existing company content created by or featuring former employees who were impacted by the layoffs, such as webinars, blog posts, or conference appearances. Assess whether this content should be removed, updated, or simply kept as is, depending on the person featured in the content, the type of content it is, and how it is used.

Creating a social media policy for your layoff event is more important than ever given the permanence of your brand online. These days, a laid off employee has the ability to reach a wider online audience with any negative fodder and leave a lasting stain on your company’s reputation. Careful planning and preparation are essential for navigating these reduction events and maintaining an appropriate presence on social media, so that your company brand can emerge intact and well-positioned for the future.

At Careerminds, we believe that you can never be too prepared for your next layoff or other workforce reduction event. Our arsenal of resources, templates, guides, and industry-leading outplacement services can help you navigate the delicate layoff process and aftermath. Click below to speak with one of our experts and see if we are the right partner for your organization.

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Rebecca Ahn

Rebecca Ahn is a prolific writer, editor, entrepreneur, and business consultant with over a decade of experience launching, managing, and coaching leaders at companies of all sizes—from solopreneurs to startups to 10,000+ employee organizations. Throughout her lengthy and diverse career, she has developed a versatile and varied expertise in all aspects of business and HR operations, leadership development, and content strategy and production across a diverse range of industries including business, HR, tech, fin-tech, hospitality, healthcare, travel, self defense, and entertainment. Rebecca is a passionate people advocate who believes in building strong people, teams, and organizations with transparent culture, content, and communication to facilitate meaningful impact at every level of the workforce and stage of the employee lifecycle. In every endeavor throughout her unconventional career as a professional chameleon and business nerd, her mission has always been to empower and educate others to be more communicative, courageous, and compelling. To not only survive, but thrive, and help those around them to do the same.