What happens to employees in an ecommerce firm when a senior executive exits?

How does the company convey the reason behind the exit without causing widespread panic and knee-jerk reactions? Let’s look at some ways the firm can engage with its staff after a CXO leaves.

When an organisation is going through a churn at the CXO level, the uncertainty in terms of an imminent collapse is always lingering around the employees. When there is a lot at stake, even with the backing of a global company, the fear needs to be addressed. There could be temporary setbacks due to the exits of CXOs resulting in internal restructuring at the organisational level, but for the end user, the impact is almost zero unless there could be changes in the policies of the sale. The new management will look at better operational efficiencies and customer experiences as well.

Impact on business

There could be a huge impact in terms of business operations unless planned well as the business decisions will await a new perspective from the new management but the current process of the organisation will not be impacted. Untoward exits of CXOs always cause a void in the system for a temporary period, but this is just a phase of uncertainty and the operations of an organisation will be restored or rejuvenated in due course. The organisation needs to assess what the merits and demerits of the exit are and have to be vocal to their employees by addressing the issue in a transparent manner. Transparency helps in keeping employee’s confidence as it could be at a low point due to uncertainties when such incidents occur.

Impact on employees

The message needs to be percolated in a positive sense by the leadership and is important for the employees to avoid speculative news and rumours and go by the authenticity of the news. One should not put their career in jeopardy by taking impulsive decisions due to such situations. The layoff is possibly the cause and effect of resource optimisation post any acquisition, to maintain the balance in the headcount vs the cost. A close integration of both Jabong and Myntra is the need of the hour for the growth of the organisation and the experienced resource pool availability in the segment is now higher. Possible outplacement processes should have been organised by Jabong to exit the employees as they could have had assistance in finding jobs from an external recruitment agency. There could be a subtle fear in the minds of other ecommerce employees on this move as they could anticipate a similar kind of fate, should their organisation plan on resource optimisation. The employees may have to look at relocations to other cities where opportunities are available.

Impact on industry

In the field of ecommerce, there is a year-on-year average job increase of 30 percent; it is amongst the highest in the percentage of increase when compared to many industries [Global Digital Report]. As an eventuality, the amount of job creation across levels is going to be commensurate with business growth in India. As a sector, ecommerce has seen absolute growth and predictions of job loss at this phase is not going to affect the hiring across the industry. Ecommerce job opportunities are aplenty as this is directly related to the user adoption and internet penetration. The internet usage is to increase by 635 million by the year 2021 [Statista] and with the advent of 5G, things in the ecommerce space will change with fintech companies playing a major role in easy enablement of payments and the overall user adoption increasing across all ecommerce companies.

Impact on hiring

Hiring cycle also faces an impact due to certain key decisions parked with the leadership and the management, which takes time due to the sudden nature of the incident. There could also be a temporary freeze and the overall impact of the situation could result in predictive attritions across levels as well. Overall, this would not cause a major impact on the job market, but the very sign of such situations could call for a lot of resumes to float in the market and the pool availability to increase for the competition.

Every industry goes through its ups and downs in terms of growth and stability. Like in the case of the IT industry, where there are frequent ups and downs in hiring patterns, the ecommerce industry will also face its share of roller coaster rides. The government policies need to regulate stability and govern the ecommerce policies for it to have a stable year-on-year growth trajectory.

(Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of YourStory.)