What do you think would happen if the C-suite called HR and told them “we’re about to announce a downsizing in 2 months, stop hiring people”?
I worked for a company that did just that and it was the best way to do it because a lot of people left on their own.
The problem is that this way, your best people with the most options leave first.
Those you want to keep long enough to do the re-structuring and make the numbers on the books look good, so you can sell the company before it disintegrates completely.
Not always. I think the best people think they WON’T be let go and some others who don’t perform, figure they are on the chopping block.
In our case it didn’t matter because they wound up having four rounds of layoffs before shutting that location down entirely. So it really wound up being WHEN you were fired, not IF.