Two important points worth making here.
First, huge stock market panics are fear-driven. Partly they're responses to fear, partly they create more of it.
When fear sets in, people get nervous. First-order, that means more concern about protection, downside risk, and survival. In business, that means, how much cash is in the bank? Can we pay our bills to employees/landlords/utilities? Since it's harder to wiggle out from long-term contractual commitments (debt service, leases), employees are often but not always the first to go, simply because they CAN be let go. Not ideal, but it happens. Additionally, hiring slows and since some level of frictional unemployment (google it) is bound to exist, those people won't be as easily re-absorbed into new jobs.
Second point: executives, salespeople, and others "at the edges" are driven by market forces. Interior decision-making, especially at large businesses and far from top management, isn't driven by external market forces to any real extent. A better model I just read in the economist explained it as companies being little miniature command economies (dictatorships), mediated by market forces in their interactions with the outside world. A few examples that come to mind: (a) wages aren't typically adjusted internally when salaries rise externally, (b) most funding decisions are made by management, not external banks/stock market. So probably wise to assume, unless sufficient evidence to the contrary, that mid-level decision making in companies won't be market-driven, it will be done by (potentially more efficient) command mechanisms. A manager tells you to do something and you do it, there isn't some auction mechanism held where people bid on tasks. We do it that way because it's more efficient.
EDIT: The article in question (very good IMO, talks about how uber is creating a semi-centrally planned, non-market driven ride economy: https://www.economist.com/christmas-specials/2019/12/18/can-...)