The staff at Virtual Gurus in Calgary have some important things in common, according to founder and CEO Bobbie Racette.
The company, which operates a marketplace of virtual assistants, is buoyed by shared attitudes, behaviours, and values, Racette says — meaning staff know who they are as an office, and “what is their ‘why.’”
The recipe for a strong office culture is cultivating this clear and unified understanding of the mission, vision, and values of a business, she says.
“If we’re all following that, then we’re all under the same culture, we’re all understanding that we have a good office culture,” Racette told DX Journal in May.
For the expanding startup that began in 2016 — and that Racette told the Times Colonialist in March is now worth $70 million — the formula makes sense.
But what if fear replaced that unity, or buying into a company’s mission, vision, and values was a tougher sell?
What if a company is circling, or undergoing, layoffs?
“Layoffs test a company’s culture both when they occur and further down the road when those at the company begin to establish their new normal,” Green Circle Life CEO Dinesh Sheth wrote in a May Forbes column.
In fact, Sheth said the fear of layoffs can spread to employees “even if they have no real reasons to fear for their own job security.”
But experts say there are ways to mitigate these office anxieties, and even maintain office culture despite them.
“Let’s be real, fear can go a long way in the workplace,” Racette said.
“But I think it’s just understanding and embracing the fear with [your staff].”
Transparency and communication
There’s job anxiety in tech, and it’s understandable: layoffs in the sector have generated plenty of conversation in recent months, and at the time of this writing, aggregator Layoffs.fyi reports that globally, 199,759 tech jobs have been lost since the beginning of 2023.
Racette actually knows a thing or two about getting laid off. Once a safety technician foreman in Alberta’s oil and gas sector, Racette was a casualty of a 2016 downturn that caused her to lose her job, the Times Colonialist reported.
What appeared as life’s misfortune proved to be the opposite: by the following year, she had founded Virtual Gurus.
The company recruits skilled remote assistants based in Canada and the U.S. who traditionally face barriers to employment, such as neurodiverse, Indigenous, and 2SLGBTQIA+ talent. Then, it matches businesses with those assistants.
According to the University of Victoria’s Gustavson School of Business, which recently named Racette its 2023 Distinguished Entrepreneur of the Year, more than 800 virtual assistants have used the platform and “Racette recently closed a successful $8.4 million Series A funding round, becoming the first Indigenous woman in Canada to do so.”
But despite these successes and efforts to build a unified culture centered around those shared office beliefs, Racette admits her own company isn’t immune to fears about the layoffs that make the tech sector so notorious.
“I’ve had, like, two employees in the last week or so go to our HR department and say they’re really scared that they’re going to lose their job, because they feel that they’re not performing as well,” Racette said.
“And the number one thing is essentially being completely transparent.”
In regards to maintaining corporate culture amidst layoff anxiety, this is perhaps the most resounding advice from experts across sectors.
“Proactive, open communication to ease employees’ anxieties over their job security … can make a difference in their view of their work culture, resulting in improved productivity and holistic happiness at work,” Sheth wrote.
And should it come to actually letting people go, that transparency should be maintained. Communicating clearly and sensitively is critical to maintaining trust, according to HR Cloud.
“When layoffs are not conveyed to employees effectively, it may result in resentment, disorientation, and a deterioration of trust between you and your employees,” it said.
“As a result, this communication process must be handled with considerable delicacy.”
Embrace the fear, acknowledge emotions
An important thing to understand about having a job in tech — or even just being human, Racette says — is that fear is normal.
And from the current macroeconomic environment to ChatGPT, there are plenty of developments happening quickly within the sector that are likely to generate uncertainty, she says.
But according to Racette, it’s possible to create an environment where people feel fears that are natural while also feeling confident and safe.
It involves understanding and acknowledging the layoff concerns of your employees, and letting them know it would be a last resort.
“Say, hey, you know, we’re going to do all we can to make sure we don’t have to do layoffs. But if we do get there, you know, this is where it’s going to be,” Racette said.
“But let’s continue working. And, we got this. Let’s keep growing as a company and keep going.”
If a company must conduct layoffs, experts say it should be reiterated to staff that other options were exhausted.
“You want to model to your organization that reducing staff was the last measure taken after dozens of other alternatives,” Yahoo Finance’s Janine Yancey wrote last August.
And while Racette says it’s important to acknowledge the emotions that can occur before layoffs are even on the table — like fear — Yancey said it’s also important to acknowledge the ones that surface after layoffs have happened.
“People are afraid for their jobs and upset that friends and co-workers are gone. They also may feel that they now have more work on their plates. Be ready to talk about this — anticipate these feelings and questions,” she wrote.
Let staff know what to expect
In addition to maintaining transparency, acknowledging fear, and ensuring employees trust their employer will do whatever they can to avoid layoffs, there is a final piece of advice Racette offers to tech companies hoping to maintain their corporate culture.
“The other thing is making [your employees] understand, too, that if that ever happens, they will be given a package,” she said, “and that they’re good.”
If employees know what to expect if the worst should happen, it can help temper fear of the unknown.
And as a company, trying to take care of those you are letting go is also important.
“Do what you can to help affected employees move on quickly,” Yancey wrote, citing Airbnb, which conducted layoffs in 2020, as an example of a company that showed consideration until the end.
“They covered their whole recruiting staff into an outplacement team, offered stock acceleration for employees, and created systems to map all their departing staff to open roles worldwide. They turned their company into an outplacement force never seen before,” she said.
“This resulted in departing staff being almost more loyal to Airbnb despite being let go.”
