Power-buying firm Ribbon has laid off 136 employees, according to a late-July company-wide announcement.
Ribbon employees were informed of the layoffs during an “All Hands” employee meeting on July 28. An hour after the meeting employees received an email informing them of their future with the firm.
According to a prepared statement from the firm’s CEO Shaival Shah read during the meeting, the layoffs came after the firm reduced all “unnecessary non-salary expenses.”
“As a leadership team, we have tried to delay this decision for as long as possible, but we are not immune to what we have been seeing elsewhere in the market,” Shah wrote.
Ribbon said the layoff decisions were based on what qualities the employees could offer the company, including “technical depth, institutional knowledge, domain expertise, strong customer service and qualities of a winning attitude, including collaboration, compassion and craftsmanship.”
The firm is providing impacted employees with two months of base salary (paid upfront) and three months of COBRA healthcare coverage. Ribbon is also allowing laid off employees to keep their laptops and is providing them with career and networking support.
“As a leader, I take responsibility for this outcome. First, I don’t excuse this to market conditions alone. Doing so would fail to honor those impacted, and miss an opportunity that we can learn from,” Shah wrote. “The market conditions exposed areas that need improvement across our product and team to evolve with the changing consumer. I am ultimately responsible to all those decisions and this decision, as a result. The next phase of Ribbon will be more agile. We needed to define the team and systems to make this plan happen with operational excellence for the next several years. “