Agency layoffs - the announcement is the only part of it most people will read

The trade press carries an agency layoff announcement most weeks at the moment. Some of them are written carefully. Most of them aren't.

This is a hard subject, and I don't want to be glib. Layoffs are real for the people inside them. The point of this post isn't to score the prose - it's that the announcement is, for most readers (current staff, prospective hires, clients, freelancers, the wider industry), the only part of the layoff they'll ever see directly.

Which means the announcement isn't a small thing. It's the leadership decision visible to the largest audience.

A pattern from reading a lot of them:

The defensive announcements. Written in the passive voice, full of phrases like "operational efficiencies", "restructuring to better serve", and "difficult but necessary decisions". They name no specific function. They thank no specific people. They sound like every other layoff announcement, which is the point - defensible language is recycled language.

The pivoting announcements. Frame the layoff as a strategic refocus. Headline forward, mention layoffs in paragraph three. These read as PR-managed, and current staff usually notice immediately that the announcement is about the agency's future, not about the people whose jobs are ending.

The accountable announcements. Name the function or team. Acknowledge the decision sits with leadership. Say something specific about what the affected people did well. Offer practical help (severance specifics, recommendation letters, introduction to specific other agencies, a public LinkedIn post offering to vouch for individuals).

The third version is rare. It's also the one that lands well with everyone who reads it - including the clients who are deciding whether the agency is the kind they want to keep working with after this kind of week.

The thing nobody quite says out loud: tone is leadership in writing. The announcement is one of the few moments where the words a CEO chooses are the news. How a layoff is announced is what tells the market what kind of company this is. It is, weirdly, one of the most consequential pieces of comms an agency writes.

It's worth taking the time. It's worth getting a second pair of eyes on it. And it's worth, before sending, reading it back imagining you are one of the people whose job is ending - and asking whether the announcement makes that experience worse or slightly less bad.

Almost every defensive layoff announcement could be rewritten in an afternoon to be accountable. Not many are.