The pressure is on in corporate America as employers continue to shrink their workforce at a startling rate.
According to data from WarnTracker.com, over 49,000 employees across the country have been laid off so far this year. Some companies that conducted layoffs this year include Meta, Amazon, Google, Wayfair, etc.
The federal government isn’t even immune to these layoffs.
President Donald Trump and Elon Musk, who runs the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), have been shrinking the federal government in an effort to “enhance accountability, reduce waste, and promote innovation,” according to a Feb. 19 executive order signed by Trump.
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Their controversial efforts have resulted in over 36,000 government employees being laid off by DOGE and over 113,000 federal departures, according to recent data from Layoffs.fyi.
Just last month alone, employers based in the U.S. announced 172,017 job cuts, a 103% increase from the number of job cuts announced in February last year, according to a recent report from Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
Trump and Musk watch the launch of the sixth test flight of the SpaceX Starship rocket on November 19, 2024 in Brownsville, Texas.
It is also the highest number of job cuts announced in any February since 2009.
As layoffs in corporate America continue to affect employees, employers are rethinking their workplace cultures.
Here are some of the top workplace news stories over the last two weeks that highlight the current state of corporate America.
Starbucks CEO says employees need to step it up
Starbucks (SBUX) CEO Brian Niccol has high expectations for employees after the company laid off 1,100 corporate employees worldwide last month and paused hiring for hundreds of open positions.
According to a recent report from the Wall Street Journal, Niccol told employees during an internal forum at Starbucks’ headquarters that they needed to adjust their decision-making process.
Niccol plays his shot from the 14th tee during the Pro Am event prior to the Memorial Tournament presented by Workday at Muirfield Village Golf Club on June 05, 2024 in Dublin, Ohio.
“We’re not effective on how things get to the store, and we’re not effective in making decisions and then holding each other accountable to those decisions,” said Niccol. “This is why we had to make the changes that we had to make.”
As Starbucks is facing declining sales, Niccol emphasized that stores need to show improvement to prevent future job cuts.
“We own whether or not this place grows,” he said.
He also highlighted that teams need to be more diligent in addressing customer complaints.
“We have way too many follow-up meetings to fix way too many surprises,” said Niccol. “We’ve got to stop it.”
Bank of America cracks down on overwork
While Starbucks is pushing employees to step their game up, Bank of America (BAC) is taking an extra step to make sure its employees aren’t overworking themselves.
According to a recent report from the Journal, Bank of America now requires its senior bankers to ensure that junior bankers aren’t working hours exceeding the company’s limits.
A Bank of America location in New York, US, on Wednesday, Dec. 27, 2023.
The company is also allegedly exploring different options to lighten the workloads of its junior bankers. One option is using artificial intelligence to assist in completing tasks such as preparing financial forecasts and pitch decks.
The move from Bank of America comes after it suffered backlash when its employee, Leo Lukenas III, who was 35 years old, died of a blood clot in his heart last year after working 100-hour workweeks at the company.
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A few months after his death, the Journal found through an investigation that Bank of America employees often pull all-nighters working on projects, and some managers even instruct employees to lie about their work hours to avoid facing scrutiny from Human Resources.
Meta has a sneaky way of blocking employees from being rehired
If you’ve ever been laid off or fired from Meta (META) , and you’ve wondered why rejoining the tech giant has been impossible, you may be on a secret blocklist.
A recent report from Business Insider revealed that Meta secretly keeps blocklists that contain a list of former fired or laid-off employees who are not eligible for rehire, despite previously having a history of good performance at the company.
Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive officer of Meta Platforms Inc., during the Meta Connect event in Menlo Park, California, US, on Wednesday, Sept. 25, 2024.
The blocklists don’t just apply to workers who have violated the company’s workplace policies or performed poorly, according to Insider.
“If a manager didn’t like you, it wasn’t hard to put someone on a list,” said one former manager at Meta who spoke to Insider.
Allegedly, a manager can simply put an employee on a blocklist by filling out a form within minutes, and it is apparently extremely difficult for a former employee to get off of it.
In a statement to Insider, a Meta spokesperson said there are several reasons why a former employee may not be eligible for rehire.
“We determine, at the time of separation, the reason for the employee’s departure — policy violation, performance termination, voluntary resignation, etc. — and that, along with the last rating prior to separation and any other recent performance signals, determines whether an employee is eligible for rehire or not,” said the spokesperson.
Jamie Dimon fires back at return-to-office complaints … again
JPMorgan Chase (^JJQ) CEO Jamie Dimon is still irked by complaints over the company’s new return-to-office mandate, which went into effect this month. The new mandate requires employees to work in the office five days a week, which has heightened tensions at the company.
During a company town hall meeting last month, Dimon doubled down on the mandate (in a foul-mouthed rant) and said that employees should not be mad at him about it since they have the option to quit working for JPMorgan.
Jamie Dimon, chief executive officer of JPMorgan Chase & Co., at the UK Global Investment Summit at Hampton Court Palace in London, UK, on Monday, Nov. 27, 2023.
In a recent interview at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, Dimon, once again, addressed the controversy. He told students that the “people in the middle” are often complaining about return-to-office mandates.
He also seemingly highlighted that during the COVID-19 pandemic, most Americans were working in person.
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“If you work in a restaurant, you’ve got to be in. You all may not know this, but 60% of Americans worked the whole time,” said Dimon. “Where did you get your Amazon packages from? Your beef, your meat, your vodka? Where did you get the diapers from? You got UPS and FedEx, manufacturers, agriculture, hospitals, cities, schools, nurses, sanitation, firemen, and military. They all worked. It’s only these people in the middle who complain a lot about it.”
He also said remote work isn’t beneficial for JPMorgan’s work culture.
“It doesn’t work in our business,” said Dimon when speaking about remote work. “And for culture, you talk about culture; it’s impossible to do culture that way.”
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