Solera triggers reorganization, layoffs with combative Teams meeting

Solera enacted a round of layoffs last week that led to an online uproar, in part because of how management handled implementation of its restructuring plans.

The automotive industry data, software and services company announced at least some of the layoffs on a mass Microsoft Teams call Nov. 10 involving affected employees who were not muted, according to a recording of part of the session posted on TikTok by Elizabeth Buckner, who was laid off. The meeting quickly devolved into yelling, obscenities and demands to fire a manager rather than the selected group.

"Everyone erupted into emotion," Buckner, a former cash application specialist for the accounts receivable department at Solera's DealerSocket division, told Automotive News.

Buckner said she decided to record the video meeting because she was upset about how multiyear employees were abruptly laid off without warning. The video quickly went viral even as she removed it and then reposted it, she said, drawing more than 110,000 views in the first six hours. It had since hit the 2 million mark after users widely shared it in the following days.

Solera, of Westlake, Texas, declined to comment on how many people were laid off and in what divisions the cuts were made.

The company issued a statement to Automotive News on some aspects of its decision, attributing the move to a planned restructuring.

"Like most global companies, we continually assess our business and take appropriate measures to ensure we can sustain growth and maintain efficient operations while we serve our worldwide customers," the company said. "Last week, we made the difficult decision to eliminate some positions as part of a planned restructuring."

Solera did not directly address why it held a mass Teams meeting for the layoffs other than to say it wanted to keep everyone informed.

"Given our distributed workforce, our intention was to reach people as swiftly as possible to avoid confusion among our team," Solera said.

Publications including Axios and Harvard Business Review have noted that with the rise of remote work in the COVID-19 era, remote layoffs via Zoom or another platform likely will continue and grow over time.

But if they do, Bill Castellano, a professor of human resource management at the Rutgers University School of Management and Labor Relations, said employers should handle remote layoffs one-on-one to address individual employee circumstances and needs. Such a meeting, he said, should include a human resources representative who can discuss next steps, severance and benefits.

A mass layoff over Teams or Zoom or any other meeting platform is a mistake, he said.

"It's one of the worst management decision practices I've ever heard of," Castellano said. "It just goes against everything we know about managing people and particularly going through such a difficult transition when people are losing their jobs."

He added that a virtual group layoff also is "just terrible even from an ethical perspective," he said. "It's really unfortunate that a company would do something like that."

Handling layoffs this way reduces employee morale and also harms a company's reputation, which Castellano said can damage recruitment efforts.

Thom Fladung, managing partner of crisis communication and reputation management firm Hennes Communications, agreed. He said that despite Solera's best intentions, the layoffs were clumsy.

"Don't do this via a mass Zoom [or group meeting] call. You have to do it person by person," Fladung said.

Fladung, who was an editor at various newspapers and conducted layoffs himself, said the process is difficult.

"There is no easy way to lay people off. No matter how you do it, you will be criticized for it," Fladung said.

Ideally, he said, an employee should be laid off in a one-on-one meeting. In the age of remote work, the more humane way would be to at least hold a virtual one-on-one meeting, he said, though he acknowledged that would be a "laborious" process.

"It's difficult. When I did it, it was hard on me," he said. "But you know what? It was not as hard as it was on the people I was laying off, and I reminded myself of that all the time."

Buckner, who had been with the company nearly seven years including through its acquisition of dealership technology company DealerSocket in 2021, said she understood Solera's move was a business decision. But, she added, the group layoff felt awful.

"It's a terrible thing to do. Make it more personal" with one-on-one meetings, she said.

Solera, in its statement to Automotive News, said that it was "committed to ensuring that departing team members are treated fairly" as they search for new jobs.

"We value each of our team members and appreciate their significant contributions to our success," the company said.

In Buckner's video of the meeting, employees can be seen tensely absorbing the news from home or in their offices. A human resources person tried to calm emotions about pending job losses by saying, "We understand this is difficult." But they were quickly interrupted by an employee who angrily disagreed and said, "That's the problem with this company. You don't care about our employees at all."

Solera has made a number of acquisitions in recent years. Beyond DealerSocket, those included fleet intelligence software platform Omnitracs and eDriving, a provider of digital driver risk management programs — all in 2021. An employee from a an acquisition who was part of the Teams call vented loudly.

"You guys bought us and (expletive) us royally; I am so disgusted," she said.

Another demanded that Solera fire a manager instead who "has let us down so many times and in so many ways," adding, "he is the problem, not the people who actually do the work."

This isn't the first round of layoffs Solera has had this year. In January, Solera Auto Finance laid off dealership sales representatives and stalled funding loans purchased from dealerships, according to two former employees, after the company had experienced explosive growth the previous year.

Dealers had reported delays in reimbursement from Solera Auto Finance, which launched in 2022, with plans to serve as a "captive-like" auto finance option for dealerships and consumers. The employees said they were let go on a companywide conference call in a layoff action that affected most of a 39-person sales force, among others.