Former Netflix exec sues company over trust exercise, firing; Paramount CEO confident about Warner Bros. acquisition

Greetings, comms pros! Let’s take a look at a few news stories from the last week and see what we can learn from them.

1. Former Netflix executive says the company fired him over revelation during a trust exercise

The former vice president and head of creative at Netflix subsidiary Eyeline Studios is suing the streaming giant over the accusation that he was fired for revealing during a company trust exercise that he used medically prescribed ketamine treatments. According to a report from The New York Post, Bailie said he took the drug to treat depression under medical supervision and revealed these facts during a “vulnerability-trust exercise” at a company retreat earlier this year.

In the lawsuit, Bailie said the company investigated him for recreational drug use and then fired him in April. The report from the Post stated that an attorney for Netflix said, “the ketamine therapy issue has factored into the termination.” The Post also reported that Bailie was denied a year of severance. Also, the report stated that alcohol use and Bailie’s alleged unprofessional conduct contributed to the firing.

In addition, Bailie’s lawsuit accuses Eyeline CEO Jeff Shapiro of turning the company retreat into an alcohol-fueled event condoned by leadership. Bailie’s suit stated that Shapiro ““set the cultural tone concerning alcohol at the executive level”.

A lot is going on here, but the biggest internal comms lesson is that moments of trust and vulnerability for employees only work when that trust is real. In this case, someone shared a medically supervised mental health treatment and later heard that that disclosure played a role in their termination. The message to everyone else is clear — be careful what you disclose, even in spaces that are nominally designed for openness.

The alcohol piece of the story makes this a little messier. Since the company has also pointed to alleged conduct tied to drinking as part of the reason for Bailie’s dismissal, this isn’t as simple as sharing something and getting fired for it. But if you’re asking employees to open up in a trust exercise, you need to clearly communicate what kind of space they’re in, what stays private and what could later become an HR issue.

2. Paramount CEO Ellison thanks employees for “continued patience” in acquisition update memo

Paramount CEO David Ellison sent a memo to the organization’s employees acknowledging that the company’s proposed merger with Warner Bros. Discovery is tied up in court. In the note obtained by The Hollywood Reporter, Ellison told his employees that the deal is on pause for the time being, “absent further developments.”

I know this additional uncertainty has been challenging, and I want to thank you for your continued patience, commitment and collective contributions. For now, it remains business as usual. Paramount and WBD are separate companies operating independently, and our focus remains on serving our audiences, supporting one another and executing our strategy. We’ve had a strong first year as the new Paramount, and that’s because of you. I’m incredibly proud of everything this team has accomplished.

The core of Ellison’s memo is built around the phrase “business as usual.” That’s intended to calm employees down in a moment of upheaval and change, but the entire reason the note was drafted is that business is not going as usual since the future of the company is tied up in the legal system. Smartly, Ellison does acknowledge his employees during the period of uncertainty and his writing refers to Paramount’s employees as the key piece when leadership can’t give them a firm timeline for when the case will be resolved. From an internal communications perspective, the biggest challenge for Paramount will be communicating the need for focus and while uncertainty floats around both internally and in the public sphere. This memo is a good start.

3. Visa chief says layoffs are due in part to the need to “keep evolving”

Visa CEO Ryan McInerney told employees that the world’s largest payment network is cutting 7% of its staff to future-proof the company. According to a memo obtained by CNBC, McInerney echoed the sentiments of many other leaders in their layoff memos this year, stating that automation played a role in the 2,600 job cuts.

“To capture the opportunities ahead and best position Visa to lead this transformation, we must continue evolving how we work,” McInerney wrote. “AI is also helping to accelerate this evolution and shape the way work gets done at Visa.”

It’s also notable that McInerney’s layoff memo came down as Visa announced its third-quarter earnings, which showed revenues up by double-digit percentages year-over-year.

“As a result of the choices we have made over the past few years, we are entering a new era in commerce with a business that has real momentum,” McInerney wrote in the memo.

McInerney’s memo frames the job cuts as part of Visa’s next chapter of growth, and his reference to strong financial performance shows that the layoffs aren’t because of a weakness but the desire to grow the company differently. As many leaders have over the last few years, he cites AI as an agent of change in the workplace and the layoffs are framed as inevitably of this landscape shift. The memo reinforces it by inferring that to keep Visa making money at the same rapid clip, shifts needed to be made, even at the expense of jobs.

4. How about some good news?

• A 14-year-old in Montana rescued a drowning man with his lasso skills.
• Tiny bamboo bridges built by volunteers in Taiwan are helping crabs migrate to the sea.
• Scientists have observed that Africa’s wildfire season is getting shorter.
• Ragan Training is an excellent place for communications professionals to find inspiration and valuable resources.
• You should be rewarded for your work. Find out how to earn an award here!

Sean Devlin is an editor at Ragan Communications. You can connect with him on LinkedIn here.