‘The optics are poor’: Paramount Global announces layoffs two days after airing a successful Super Bowl

Picture this: Your company celebrates a big win, then two days later, it announces a massive layoff…that timing feels off, doesn’t it?

Paramount Global, owner of streaming platform Paramount+ and TV networks including CBS, MTV, and Comedy Central, announced layoffs on Feb. 13 affecting roughly 800 employees, or 3% of its workforce, CNN reported. While Paramount Global’s CEO, Bob Bakish, told employees on Jan. 25 that the company would “reduce our workforce globally” as a “path to earnings growth,” according to a memo obtained by CNN, the news came just two days after CBS’s broadcast of Super Bowl LVIII garnered 123.4 million viewers, up from 115.1 million in 2023, the New York Times reported.

“The optics are poor,” said Deborah Grayson Riegel, a communication and leadership expert who’s taught at Columbia and Wharton Business Schools. “When you are a company that is in the public eye around something so big and so current, there will likely never be a great time for pulling the rug out from under [employees], but I think the timing could and should have been better.”

Grayson Riegel and leadership consultant and author Cy Wakeman shared their thoughts on the timing of the cuts and how HR pros can handle tricky layoff situations.

Always a bad time. Workforce reductions are always planned in advance, Grayson Riegel told HR Brew, but Paramount Global’s leadership may not have fully considered the unintended impact of the timing.

“I have no idea what their finances are, but I think waiting even two weeks, so that it wasn’t literally on the heels of [it] being a leading news story, the topic of conversation, [and] people still buying and selling [Super Bowl] merchandise,” Grayson Riegel said.

Wakeman noted that the “timing of hard things never softens the blow, like it would hurt the same if this happened two weeks after the Super Bowl and four weeks after the Super Bowl,” and almost always provoke feelings of grief, surprise, panic, and blame for employees.

What’s HR to do? Wakeman said HR pros can help employees by validating their feelings, but not validating unconfirmed stories or rumors about the business decisions.

“Stay focused on the human being,” Wakeman said. After delivering layoff news, HR pros should first “attend to people’s basics for today, this week, this month…How are you? What are your needs right now? How can we help you?”

Grayson Riegel agreed that HR pros should “recognize that there is going to be grief, confusion, anger, loss of trust, resentment, and more…for both the people who have been let go and for the people who are left behind."

“While you may not be at liberty to share your opinion about it…You are at liberty, I think, to share your feelings about it, which [could be]: I’m sorry that this is happening to you. I feel for you,” Grayson Riegel said. “You are entitled to share your own personal feelings about this, as long as it doesn’t outwardly disagree with the company’s stance.”

HR should also try to anticipate and answer employees’ questions, she said. If the company just had a public success, Grayson Riegel recommended sharing official company communication about it, and if leadership doesn’t provide it, advocate for it.

Once employees have all the information, Wakeman said HR pros can connect those who have been let go with resources, such as LinkedIn networks and career opportunities, so they can “start dreaming and scheming about [what’s] after the grief.”

A spokesperson from Paramount Global declined to comment.