THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. Friday, April 3, 2020 |R5
SPECIAL REPORT |NAVIGATING THE CORONAVIRUS
You’re
Fired,
But From
A Distance
ALICIA TATONE; EYEWEAR: MATTHEW HOLLISTERWho’s at Risk
GovernmentofficialshavewarnedthatmillionsofAmericanscouldbecomeinfectedwithcoronavirusthisyear.Whilethediseaseisseriousformanypatients,
othersexperiencefewornosymptoms.Whatarethechancesofhavingaseriousorlife-threateningcase?Datafromaroundtheworldprovidesomeclues.
60% 40 20 00 20 40 60%0-910-1920-2930-3940-4950-5960-6970-7980-8990+
30% 20 10 00 10 20%0-910-1920-2930-3940-4950-5960-6970-7980-8990+
0100%255075Allconfirmedcases SeverecasesUpto59inage
60andaboveOlder patients account for most
of the severe cases, despite making
up a smaller share of all cases,
data from South Korea show
Underlying medical conditions
worsen the prognosisMale Covid-19 patients are more likley to be hospitalized and to die, a trend that increases with age
Percentageineachagegrouprequiringhospitalization,inSpain PercentageofSpanishpatientswhodie
ShareofU.S.Covid-19patients
requiringhospitalstaysMostcommonpre-existingconditionsin
patientswhodiedinItalyMen WomenWith underlying conditionsWithout41%9%Highbloodpressure 73%Diabetes 31Coronaryarterydisease 28Irregularheartbeat 24Chronickidneyfailure 22Sources: Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Spain’s Ministryof Health; U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Istituto Superiore di Sanità, Italy JOSH ULICK/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Tips for
Video Chat#2Make Glasses
Look Sharp
Howdoyou avoid glasses
glaring or looking fogged in
webcam light?
Many brands offer antire-
flective coating on lenses,
which reduces glasses’ glare.
Clean lenses, of course, are
key. “Eyewear is such a part
of your character, it goes on
your face,” says Garrett
Leight, founder and CEO of
his eponymous sunglasses
and prescription-glasses
brand. “Be yourself, the same
person you always were be-
fore all this. I wouldn’t start
wearing glasses...in the mid-
dle of the coronavirus.”
Eyeglass wearers who
have multiple pairs might
consider opting for the
frames that contrast most
with their skin color; if you
have lighter skin, for example,
pick darker tortoise or black
frames. Mr. Leight also rec-
ommends considering glasses
with a blue-light filter since
they help absorb the blue
light devices emit that’s been
found to disrupt our sleep
patterns.
—Lane Florsheimshe quickly muted herself and shut
off her computer’s video camera;
she says she was comforted to hear
Pana was dedicating resources to
help people find other work.
Sam Felsenthal, Pana’s chief op-
erating officer, says that delivering
the news over Zoom was “the last
thing anybody wanted to do,” but
management had been advised to
limit the time between workers
hearing a layoff was coming and
learning they were part of the
group being laid off.
TripActions Inc., a corporate-
travel startup based in Palo Alto,
Calif., grabbed headlines last week
as one of the first companies to
enact a significant layoff—nearly
300 employees, or 25% of its
staff—over Zoom. Ariel Cohen, the
co-founder and chief executive,says there is no good way to let
people go. He worried that talking
to employees individually would
create a situation where the sad
news spread quickly and created
anxiety before management could
reach everyone.
“Whether we do it over Zoom or
face-to-face, the actual act is horri-
ble,” Mr. Cohen says of the layoff.
The Society for Human Resource
Management estimates that 60% of
the U.S. workforce is currently
working from home. As many busi-
nesses enter the fourth week of a
shutdown aimed at stopping the
spread of the new coronavirus, sig-
nificant layoffs and furloughs have
become a reality at a time when it
is impossible for many people to
have an in-person interaction with
their manager.
When possible, employees
should be notified of their termina-
tion individually, says Brian Kropp,
chief of HR research at Gartner, a
research firm. But if it has to hap-
pen in a group video or conference
call, Mr. Kropp recommends turn-
ing off cameras and microphones
of those dialing in and hiding the
list of people on the call.
Tracy Cote, chief people officer
at human-resources-technology
firm Zenefits, says if bad news has
to be delivered to somebody work-
ing from home, managers should
make sure that person understands
a difficult conversation is comingso they can find a space that is at
least semiprivate.
“You don’t want to tell them
they’re laid off in the middle of the
kitchen with the family around,”
she says.
Brad Barron had been working
from his Los Angeles home for
about a week when a scheduled
phone call with the CEO of Beach
House Group, his employer’s par-
ent company, appeared on his cal-
endar for the following morning.
Mr. Barron, 31, says he wasn’t sur-
prised to learn in the meeting thathis role as head of
marketing at Moon
Oral Care had been
eliminated. But he
says he wishes it
had been done in a
FaceTime call to
help him read the
situation fully.
“It’s really hard
to have that conver-
sation without look-
ing someone in the
eyes,” says Mr. Bar-
ron. The upside of
being laid off while
working from home:
He says he was
spared the sudden
shock of no longer
going into the of-
fice.“Ialways
imagine one of the
worst parts is hav-
ing to pack up your
stuff in front of a
bunch of people.”
Beach House
Group didn’t re-
spond to requests
for comment.
Though experts
recommend allow-
ing employees to
decide whether they want to be
visible during a remote termina-
tion, managers who communicate
the message through a videocon-
ference should be on camera, so
that employees can pick up on sub-
tle cues and recognize genuine
emotion, says Amy Tilles, principal
in the career business at Mercer
LLC, a consulting firm.
Jesse Barnes, a 25-year-old for-
mer sales rep, found out he was
one of 90 employees being laid off
at Foodsby, an office-lunch-deliv-
ery startup, in a personal call from
the Minneapolis-based company’s
chief revenue officer in late March.
The following morning, the CEO,
Ben Cattoor, announced the news
to the company’s 150 employees on
a RingCentral video call.
“As a leader, this is a situation
you hope you never have to en-
counter,” Mr. Cattoor was quoted
as saying later, in a company state-
ment. “It’s never easy letting peo-
ple go, but it is especially difficult
when it is of this magnitude and in
response to something that’s en-
tirely out of everyone’s control.”
On the video call, “he was tear-
ing up and having a visibly hard
time with this decision,” says Mr.
Barnes. “That really hit me.”Ms. Dillis a reporter for The Wall
Street Journal in New York. She
canbereachedat
[email protected].Significant layoffs have become a reality at a time
when it is impossible for many people to have an
in-person interaction with their manager.First people were sent
home to work. Now they’re
getting laid off remotely.T
he one-two punch of social
distancing and economic
devastation is giving work-
ers something new to worry
about: remote termination.
From tech employees in
Silicon Valley to marketing
and sales professionals in the Midwest,
people are finding out en masse that
they are losing their jobs on conference
calls, Zoom video chats and via email.
Some workers are calling out the prac-
tice as particularly harsh, while others
concede that many companies have little
choice but to let people go by remote.
Ruthie Townsend didn’t think any-
thing was amiss last week when she
logged into her company’s standing staff
meeting on Zoom, even though manage-
ment at Pana, the business-travel-soft-
ware startup where she worked, had
warned the company might face serious
challenges. But at the top of the video-
conference call, employees at the Den-
ver-based company were told they would
soon receive either an email indicating
that they were still employed, or an in-
vite to another Zoom call at which sev-
erance details would be explained.
Ms. Townsend, a 25-year-old sales
rep, began furiously refreshing her email
until the calendar invite appeared in her
inbox. “I was already panicking,” she
says. “I forgot if this is the one where I
get laid off or I’m keeping my job.”
When she logged into the next Zoom
call and realized she was being laid off,BYKATHRYNDILL