Presumably investors and those shorting the company would benefit from more accurate information about a company. So the market as a whole would be healthier and less prone to inflationary claims.
I also don’t think that excuse would really hold up under scrutiny: “we fired 14% of our workforce to maximize shareholder value” isn’t exactly a straightforward answer. Right now the answer seems to be latching onto whatever’s trendy and blaming the layoffs on that.
If there is an expectation that reasons will be investigated, then I think you’d just get more accurate information in the market, tldr.
"We took out some huge debt and need to pay it off asap so ...."
"I made a strategic mistake, so ...."
"I'm hoping to get a huge rise in the stock price and make money off it somehow so ...."
I'm just joking but I think the point is that the smug person doing the firing wants to make themselves look good rather than bad and HAS to try to make the company look good to shareholders even if it's not.
OP is discussing firings.
And yeah, there's crossover but they're not 1 to 1. At the same time, if a company is taking two people of equal position and firing one, or keeping the other, the honesty in how they came to that conclusion through transparency has value. Was the decision one of seniority? Performance? Geographical relevance? Was it favoritism masked in another reason? The person receiving the pink slip deserves to know the truth, especially in cases where legal matters could be of question where a company may say one thing, but be acting on another.
