Mark Zuckerberg and other leaders at Meta aren’t beating around the bush: Their recent layoffs have hit employees hard. The CEO recently acknowledged the company “made mistakes” in how it rolled out the massive job cuts, where 8,000 were laid off and another 7,000 transferred. Meanwhile, Chief Technology Officer Andrew Bosworth said company morale is it at its lowest point in his two decades with the organization.

According to new research, Meta, as well as the many other companies that have issued sweeping layoffs in the last few months, may face a long road until company culture bounces back.

In fact, the study from Careerminds puts a number to it: 7.2 months.

The influence of layoffs on culture

The global workforce solutions firm surveyed more than 600 HR leaders at U.S.-based companies that have had layoffs in the last two years, finding that about 70% said their organization’s culture had recovered to its pre-layoff stage. On average, it took about seven months. About 60% said the culture had bounced back by about 12 months, while a quarter put it under six. Meanwhile, about one-quarter said the culture still hadn’t recovered.

A key influence over culture damage and recovery is trust in leadership and the organization.

In the immediate weeks following a layoff, those surveyed said employee trust in the company’s future fell by more than 19%, with broken trust in senior leadership and managers nearly as common.

Trust in supervisors has rebounded the quickest, the survey found, but is still more than 7% lower than before the layoff. Confidence in the organization and senior leaders are both more than 10% lower.

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