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WorkWingman — Company Health (Plain Language)

This is a summary of what already happened, not a prediction. When you're looking at a job, WorkWingman gives the company a quick health read — a single label from Growth to Risk — so you can lean toward companies that have been growing and be a little more careful with ones that have recently been shrinking. It only looks backward at facts that already happened. It never says a company will lay you off or that your job would be safe, and it's not financial advice.

Why this matters: nobody wants to accept an offer right before a round of layoffs. If a company just cut a big chunk of its staff, had a run of bad news, and its stock has been sliding all year, that's worth knowing before you spend a week on the application. This read pulls those already-known facts together so you don't have to go dig them up one at a time. It never blocks you from applying — it's just there to inform you.

The idea

Three simple, already-public things tell you a lot about whether a company has recently been growing or shrinking:

  1. Did they lay people off recently, and how many? A big, recent layoff matters more than a small one from years ago.
  2. What's the tone of their recent news? Product launches and record earnings read positive; lawsuits and job cuts read negative.
  3. For public companies, which way has the stock been going over the past several months? Up or down — as a plain fact about the past, not a bet on the future.

WorkWingman rolls those into one easy-to-read label with a short list of the exact facts behind it.

What you'll see

  • A single label, coloured green to red:
  • Growth — recent facts lean toward the company expanding.
  • Stable — no strong signal either way.
  • Caution — some signs of recent contraction.
  • Risk — strong signs of recent contraction (a big, recent layoff; a run of bad news).
  • Unknown — we honestly don't have anything on record for this company. That's common and it's not an error.
  • A score out of 100 (higher = healthier), just as a rough way to compare companies. It's a blunt summary, not a precise measurement.
  • A short list of reasons — the actual facts behind the label, each one saying where it came from (a government layoff notice, a news source, the stock's price history) and when it happened, with a link when there is one.
  • A "limited data" note when we could only use some of the three signals — most often for a private company, where there's no stock to look at.

What we do instead of guessing

Every reason on the card is a real fact we can point to a source for. We never invent a layoff number, never make up a stock move, and never turn "we don't know" into a confident-looking label. If we have nothing on record, the card says exactly that. If a company is private, we still read its layoffs and news and just skip the stock part — clearly noting we had less to go on.

And to be crystal clear: a red Risk label does not mean the company is about to lay you off, and a green Growth label does not mean your job would be safe. It's a summary of what already happened, meant to help you do your own research — not a crystal ball, and not financial advice.

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