The post, which showed only his hand holding a drink, included a caption reading “Cheers to my homies.” Shortly after its posting, many recently dismissed employees expressed their disapproval in the comments below the photo before the entire post was deleted. There’s been no public response to the post from the company or Holmes.
One of the comments under the photo read “I love drinking after firing so many people!!!” while another read “Bet it tastes so sweet now that the dirty work is done.” The company reportedly laid off 65 employees from their San Francisco, Boston, and Singapore offices, as well as from the company headquarters in Vancouver. While layoffs are an expected norm at many companies, the CEO posting about it to social media is not. Darious Maxwell Fisher, president and cofounder of Status Labs, a startup that combines traditional and PR techniques with online engineers to handle online crises, said in order to prevent social media disasters, it’s important that leadership undergo social media training. Hootsuite corporate communications manager, Sandy Pell, said via email that the layoffs were necessary to improve the company in the long-term and also acknowledged that as many as 20 people were let go from the Vancouver office: Most of the employees laid off were part of sales teams, and it’s been reported that roughly 40 percent of the team in Singapore was effected by the reorganization. What do you think? Was the post harmless, or insensitive?
