University of North Dakota Announcing Employee Layoffs Memo

Announcing Employee Layoffs

You are the SVP of human resources for a financial software company that has 7,500 employees. The company has decided to sell AccountSoft, one of its major products. The software has suffered declining sales for the past two years, and it is no longer fits with the new mission of the company, which is to sell to small businesses and individuals, rather than larger accounting firms (currently 955 of AccountSoft’s buyers).

You will have individual conversations with employees who are affected by the layoffs, but first you advise the CEO to send an email to all employees to announce the decision to sell AccountSoft and to prepare employees for the downsizing and what will happen next.

As you write this memo for the CEO to send under her name (Kathryn J. Ptaskiewicz), consider that not all employees from the AccountSoft division will be laid off. The sales and marketing staff (about 150 people) will be leaving the firm, but the software developers will go to the acquiring firm, Accounting Support Services, Inc. As part of your acquisition agreement with Accounting Support Services, Inc., the company agreed to hire the software developers.

Your Task: Write a MEMO (for the CEO—her name will appear in the “From” line of the Memo; you are just the author of the document for the CEO) to communicate the decision CLEARLY and help employees understand and accept the bad news.

An example of a memo format is found in the textbook on page 49 in Exhibit 2-18 and on page 87. Make sure you study the memo alignment on page 87! it is very important that your alignment is correct! Many points will be deducted for incorrect formatting of the memo alignment and the entire memo if it is formatted incorrectly! The memo headings (To, From, Date, Subject) should be BOLD but not the text for the content!