How to make Zoom offboarding a little less awful.

You’ll recall that at the beginning of December, Better.com CEO Vishal Garg summoned 900 of his employees to a video call and promptly explained that they had logged on to be laid off.

A public-relations debacle ensued when video of the call went viral, and reporting throughout the week chronicled the fallout at the online mortgage broker: Comments written by Garg on the anonymous messaging platform Blind accused some of the laid-off employees of “stealing” by working two hours a day, as Fortune reported.

The billionaire CEO later apologized to his remaining employees, writing that he “blundered the execution.” (The company’s board has since announced that Garg will take time off, TechCrunch reported Friday.)

As Garg’s, uh, execution, continues to spark backlash, a question arises: Is there a dignified way to use video chat to notify hundreds of employees that their positions are being terminated?

Don’t act like it doesn’t suck. As the organizational consultant and author Hedda Bird told HR Brew, avoiding the Garg-ian playbook is simple; she just calls for compassion and respect. “You always have to remember that as a manager, you don’t have to make it feel any worse, because it feels terrible,” she explained.

For starters, you want to make the news feel less like a mass execution (and maybe avoid the word “execution” altogether?). Painful “messages need to be given either one to one, or in very small groups,” Bird advised.

In a situation that calls for massive restructuring—such as culling 10% of a workforce—this would take a great deal of time. Therefore, Bird believes meetings need to be spread throughout a day or a week, or however long it takes. And while that waiting period can make workers feel like their fate hangs in the balance, Bird said managers can make it hurt somewhat less by offering some honest perspective with messaging to the effect of “This [decision] is not about you personally, it’s not a judgment on you, it is not a statement about you.”

Train managers how to do it correctly. Nobody wants to lay people off, but it’s something a manager can be taught how to do appropriately. Bird suggests having an organization’s head of people produce a video or conduct a role-playing exercise in which managers are shown what to say and how to say it. She advises having systems in place for when layoffs occur. For one, employees may want closure and to ask questions about severance, so give them a number and a time to call to ask for what they need.

The bottom line: It’s an unenviable position, but laying off your staff doesn’t need to turn you into the internet’s villain du jour.—SB

Do you work in HR or have information about your HR department we should know? Contact Sam Blum via the encrypted messaging apps Signal and Telegram (@SamBlum_Brew) or simply email [email protected].