There was one round that I had participated that went like this. Regardless of the outcome, everyone went into talk to a manager. One manager was assigned the unpleasant task of telling the individual that he will be let go. The other manager had the easier task of telling the employee that he will stay. Truly was awful for both groups of employees. My boss, Jim, was the one assigned with the "bad news" task. His boss was the "good cop." Jim had volunteered to retire during that round and I couldn't blame him a bit. To this day, I think he was my favorite manager. He landed on his feet and worked actively as a consultant. As for the "bad cop," she was later fired for incompetence (not related to the layoff process). This process was nevertheless better than the very first round I had participated when I had only worked for the company for a year and a half. In that case, everyone waited on that fateful day. Only the person who was being let go was asked to go to the conference room for the bad news. Anyone not called was spared. It was like trying to find out if you've been chosen to die. We all tried to ignore what was going on. On that morning, I had seen a colleague walk back to his office and I greeted him. He had a blank stare. He was just informed he would be let go. He was young and eager to work in his field, but when he left, he completely abandoned his field and did something else altogether.
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I have a feeling a discussion will go like this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3YkqbP-4ao
In the US managers need to complete all conversations before Thanksgiving - almost all need to happen next week because many people will be away for the holiday. They don’t have the leisure to be thoughtful about the order.
In my opinion, each line manager will decide the order in which to communicate the news to his/her team. Our team has already got the meeting scheduled for next week. If it hasn't been "real" last few months, it definitely got really REAL now.
As the first poster says, it just depends who is available for a meeting first. I expect many people have already got their meetings booked for next week.
It used to be quite rare and frowned upon to be made redundant via skype/teams/etc. I imagine that it will become the norm now.
Doesn’t matter. Alphabetical order.