Elon Musk, new owner of Twitter as of October 27, set the tech industry ablaze when he deployed a wave of layoffs affecting nearly half of the social media company’s US workforce. But apparently, his decision impacted its African office as well.
Per a BBC report, Twitter’s Ghanaian HQ was sent termination emails last week to their personal email and not their official Twitter emails as they were already denied access. This comes just days after the Ghana office was opened on November 1, 2022. There were less than 20 employees working at the location according to BBC, but the office was highly praised ahead of its opening, with the company saying it wanted to be more immersed in African conversations.
“It’s very insulting,” an anonymous Ghana employee said in an interview with BBC. Laws in the country state that staff who are let go must be paid redundancy and should be given three months notice, instead of the mere weeks that was reported the Ghanaian employees received. The workers were told their “last day of employment will be 4 December 2022”.
“From the mail to the lack of next steps to the tone of the letter. Just everything. Ridiculously insulting,” the staff member continued, according to BBC.
The Ghanaian office layoffs are on the heels of a massive cull at the US headquarters earlier this with reportedly around 3,700 out of its nearly 7,000 employees fired via email.
On Thursday, it was reported that a company-wide email was sent stating employees would be informed whether they would be fired on Friday, in a lottery-style layoff process.
“In an effort to place Twitter on a healthy path, we will go through the difficult process of reducing our global work force,” the email said. “We recognize that this will impact a number of individuals who have made valuable contributions to Twitter, but this action is unfortunately necessary to ensure the company’s success moving forward.”
Since the layoffs, it has been reported the company is asking some fired employees to come back.
A report by Bloomberg said Twitter has been reaching out to “dozens of employees” to return and reportedly putting together a list of names to resume work.