Rain Financial (Layoff)
Layoff Crisis Communications Strategy
THE BRIEF
Rain, the first regulated and leading cryptocurrency trading platform in the GCC, unfortunately faced multiple crises amidst multiple crypto crashes in the months of June and September of 2022.
Challenging market dynamics in both of these instances forced Rain to lay off several of its employees, with the first crisis coming on the heels of a news leak from one of Bahrain’s local media outlets. Atteline reacted within minutes of the announcement with extreme caution to prepare all of the necessary responses that would not only be used in this reactive capacity, but also to prepare for potential future crises, which unfortunately did eventually come to fruition.
THE DELIVERY
With all eyes on the situation, Atteline’s crisis communications team prepared official statements on behalf of Rain’s co-founder and CEO, as well as the rest of the co-founders, in both English and Arabic. Atteline focused its guidance and recommendations on extensive research not only on the market conditions and other company reactions, but also on the different touchpoints and platforms that its clients, stakeholders and teammates were highly invested in. The crisis response included a brief but minimal overview of what had occurred, conveyed the company’s sincere empathy towards the employees that were affected, and outlined what was being done to resolve this – all of which are essential steps that should be taken in any crisis communications approach.
Atteline strategically shared this information with a trusted journalist and long-time advocate of the company from one of the leading business titles, Bloomberg. This subsequently led to various media interactions, to which we shared Rain’s official statement while maintaining uniform messaging throughout all media inquisitions. Atteline also prepared more personal messages for each of the company’s four co-founders to share on their LinkedIn pages to ensure to preempt any questions and concerns that might arise on the public forum.
THE OUTCOME
By choosing not to avoid media interaction, we were able to get ahead of the situation with a genuine, honest, and unified message that enabled us to control the narrative instead of allowing the media to run rampant with it.
We were able to keep this narrative with the media, and the public, by emphasizing that this unfortunate situation was industry-induced and unrelated to any internal or financial conflict within the company. The comprehensive, albeit focused, statement entailed Rain’s empathy towards the hard-working employees that it displaced, highlighted the fact that the founding team was doing everything in their power to limit the damage that was done via a severance package that exceeded any contractual obligations, and exemplified a humanitarian approach to assist as much as possible until the employees were able to land their next career opportunities.