Weight Watches fires thousands of workers via Zoom with a plan save $100 Million

Weight Watchers (WW) fired thousand of their staff via Zoom video call as the company continues to struggle due to the coronavirus pandemic. According to reports, a manager came on Zoom (ZM) to fire about 4 thousand people while reading a script and had all participants muted so they could not interrupt or comment during the firing speech. 

Responding to the mass firing, Nick Hotchkin, the chief financial officer for WW said, “It wasn’t practical to have all of the conversations be one-on-one. Employees had been encouraged to reach out to their managers for follow-ups after the Zoom meetings”.

Weight Watcher is a big company with over 17,000 full and part-time employees at the end of last year”.  The company is facing backlash for firing its staff on Zoom video. Mindy Grossman, WW president, and CEO said the company has to close many studios around the world and that forced them to make a difficult decision to fire people and close studios.  The company’s coronavirus cost cuts plan is to cut $100 million and they started by laying people off and closing some of their studios.   

"While we have seen some recovery, given the uncertainty around 2020 revenue levels, we are withdrawing our full-year 2020 financial guidance." However, the company added, "We continue to be excited about our long-term growth opportunities with our digital platform.”

Weight Watcher Internation stock is trading at $25.56 per share, down by about 50% from its 52 weeks high.