Flock Safety has opened a voluntary separation programme with enhanced severance terms for its roughly 1,500 employees, as customer losses and a sustained privacy backlash force staffing cuts at the Atlanta-based company.
The programme opened on Friday, 18 September. Employees who choose to leave have until 2 October to apply, and are expected to receive decisions on 9 October. Most approved departures are scheduled for 29 October, although Flock may ask some staff to remain for another one to three months after that date.
The company expects significant interest across its workforce and plans to approve most requests. According to reporting, Flock would “almost certainly” need to lay off some employees without the voluntary buyouts.
The package is roughly double Flock's previous severance offers. Some employees have received offers in the range of tens of thousands of dollars, along with several months of health coverage and up to two years to exercise stock options. The precise amounts offered to individual employees are unknown.
Flock has not commented publicly on the separation programme. It is also unclear how many employees it expects to accept the offer, or whether most departures will take place by 29 October.
The company built its business around automated license plate reader technology. The technology has drawn intense scrutiny from privacy advocates and civil liberties organisations.
That pressure has been followed by customer losses. Dozens of cities are ending contracts for Flock's license plate readers, and those losses are feeding into the company's staffing cuts.
Garrett Langley, Flock's chief executive, recently said the controversy's greatest effect had been on internal morale. The buyouts are intended to give employees who have been demoralised by the backlash a way to leave voluntarily while reducing the need for forced redundancies.
Flock was once valued above $8 billion. Its separation offer signals the scale of the internal adjustment under way as the company confronts continuing opposition to its license plate recognition technology and the loss of customers.
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