> everyone including the people you want to stay start looking for work If you're laying off a sizeable portion of your employees, there's absolutely no way to

> everyone including the people you want to stay start looking for work If you're laying off a sizeable portion of your employees, there's absolutely no way to tell a specific subset to not think hard about their options and what they'd do if they're next. In many places you can't just fire thousands of employees the next day without heavy penalties, so doing it as transparently as possible (which also means months in advance), with clear paths for people to get out is probably the best approach and will let the remaining people understand they can trust you not screwing them over if/when time will come.