The Scorched Earth Left Behind by Layoffs

What goes through the minds of people who escape the executioner’s call? Here’s my interview with an acquaintance whose employer is in the midst of broad layoffs. Her name is withheld to avoid reprisals.

What’s your view on layoffs in the news?

“Rarely does a week go by without the media trotting around another story about job cuts, layoffs or massive restructurings in Canada. These stories can hit the airwaves like a brick through a window …

“We never hear where these unfortunate people end up, but we hear plenty of polished excuses the companies use to legitimize their actions. If (the media) ever runs after (the story), they too often tilt them in favour of the employer, not the affected employees.”

Are there any lessons learned for you? 

“While the loss of some people is terrible for them, it also affects the people who remain on the job. It makes it harder for them to meet their objectives and they feel less empowered to express any dissatisfaction with the new reality for fear of being targeted in the next round of layoff reprisals.”

What are your views on layoffs as a corporate tactic, compared to the alternatives? 

“Layoffs are a corporation’s best friend. Like taking off a BAND-AID in one quick rip, the pain is instant and extreme, but avoids a drawn out, hesitant process.  I doubt that corporations would take a different tactic, even if they knew it would soften the blow on people. They know the power that fear instills in people and they rely on threat of layoffs to ensure order in the ranks.”

How can our society build bridges to smooth the transition for employees and employers?

“If it costs as much to eliminate jobs as it does to protect them, they may not turn to layoffs. They might put more effort toward offering things like: job-sharing; unpaid vacation; or reduced benefits.”

What can be done to remove stigmas for people in transition, and the people or company that put them there? 

“Change the face of the downsized employee. Make the business the culprit, not the worker. Social media can help that. If the public backlashes in force against layoffs they deem unfair or irresponsible, there will be fewer of them and more attention towards how to avoid them in the first place.”

What was the impact on the survivors around you? 

“Fear of more to come, the realization of more work to be done by fewer people, and the reality that the job market has just been flooded with more skilled people looking for work, which increases the competition for those still working but looking for other opportunities. A too-tight job market is not good for anybody’s prospects.”

How were your leaders affected? 

“It depends. Most of the leaders will kiss up to anyone signing their pay cheque, so in reality, most leaders either don’t care all that much (as long as they still have a job) or they just do a good job of hiding it from others, so they don’t appear weak or opposed to the strategic direction set by more senior leadership.”

Can survivors be trusted as brand ambassadors? 

“There is definitely a lingering effect. Anger fades over time. How the people who remain on the job are treated after layoffs will affect morale. Most employees today are more thankful to be working rather than having been caught up in layoffs, but to say they are happy to the point of being brand ambassadors, is another thing entirely.”

This May Take a While: Economists Agree the Economy Continues to Struggle

Forgive me Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, but a corporate layoff is not the time to drop everything and work through the five stages of loss.

Even if you are among the lucky people whose severance package provides a few months of regular income, don’t be tempted to “take a much deserved break.”

Your mortgage and, or other regular expenses are chirping for nourishment like baby birds in a nest.

Canadian employers created 35,400 jobs in January and the jobless rate improved marginally to 6.6 per cent. However Statistics Canada has yet to calculate the impact of 17,600 layoffs at Target, 350 at Tim Hortons and many more in the financial services, oil and mining industries.

If there’s is one thing that economists can agree upon it’s the fact that the economy will continue struggling for some time.

Research conducted by CIBC suggests the quality of jobs in Canada has dropped to its lowest level in 25 years.

The bank’s employment quality index dropped 15% since the early 1990s, falling 1.8% in 2014 alone. The index considers the distribution of full- and part-time jobs. It also compares the number of people who are self-employed or in higher-quality occupations, and whether full-time jobs were created in low-, medium- or high-paying sectors.

CIBC also reports that since the late 1980s, the number of part-time jobs increased much more quickly than higher-quality, full-time positions. The creation of low-paying positions has outpaced higher-paid jobs since the early 1990s.

Who can afford to fall behind in the race to return with dignity to a full-time position of reasonable quality? Chances are, it’s going to take a while and looking for a new job will be therapeutic in itself.

Don’t Lose Your Head When they Take the Legs Out from Under You

DABDA is not the psychotic rambling of a recently laid off worker. It’s an acronym you should keep in the back of your mind when you finally roll out of bed after Day One of your extended absence from work.

Denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance (DABDA) are the emotional stages a person experiences after loss.

Usually reserved for survivors after the death of a close friend or family member, the DABDA model was introduced by Swiss psychiatrist Elizabeth Kubler-Ross in 1969.

The theory later embraced other forms of personal loss, including the loss of a job or income and other life events.

Studies suggest these stages of grief represent the basic human process of integrating new information that conflicts with previous beliefs.

Individuals experience the stages differently, perhaps in another order, or lingering in one stage and skipping past another. If you’re surrounded by happy, positive people, you may have a totally different experience altogether.

With a layoff, denial may manifest as keeping the bad news from your spouse, or refusing to change your lifestyle and adjust to a salary interruption.

Anger may make people write nasty blogs about their experience.

Bargaining may be a refusal to sign off on your severance proposal, silently hoping for reinstatement.

Depression could be the letdown when one promising opportunity after another evaporates after hours or days of preparation for interviews.

Acceptance is acknowledging that you are indeed okay and capable of life after layoff.

I am not a psychologist who can attest to the validity of these examples of the five stages, but I hope you still get the drift.

The purpose of my mentioning these is to help you recognize and cope with your loss. Talk to your family and friends about your feelings. Listen to how they speak to and about you. Consider what you learn from them.

If necessary, there’s certainly no shame in reaching out for professional help. Talk to your doctor or connect directly with a psychologist. The sooner you work through your loss, the sooner you will feel fit enough to return with a passionate bang to the workforce.

Day One

If you’re waking up unemployed today, feeling the cold hangover of a corporate layoff, hit the snooze button. Roll over and pull the sheets back up over your ears.

It’s over. There’s no going back. Your daily routine has run into a brick wall, so a little more shut-eye will do you more good than harm now.

If you return to a dream state, take your time replaying the layoff scene. Allow the memories of your undressing rise up slowly, hopefully diminished by the haze between waking and sleep.

Time stopped in the room. There was no air. The temperature was rising fast. Voices sounded like the condescending “wah, wah, wah” used to scold Charlie Brown and his school chums.

It turned into a glum morning of unanswered questions. Why was a relative stranger – the latest senior vice president on a corporate carousel – called upon to recite a script about reorganization and job redundancy? Where was the vice president who hired me? Why was that HR representative cooing and smiling as if I was getting an award? And who let that third-party “transition coach” into the room without my permission?

Relive that nightmare, get angry if you must, but don’t linger on that street corner.

No one should blame you for being cynical, or succumbing to the blame game. Point a finger at the petty high school politics your old boss used to poison the work environment. Stomp your feet and rant about ageism. Curse the Top Dog who is transitioning the organization from a mom-and-pop-style culture to one based on metrics and performance. Blast the business case for an immediate, dramatic increase in the organization’s technology investment.

Your layoff may be the culmination of any or all of those scenarios.

Layoffs are complicated, particularly when you add theories about severance pay to the mix. My lawyer says companies typically offer an exit package well below the amount anyone would earn through litigation. Legal costs to fight a big corporation may eclipse what the court awards you. Funny how that works.

Yet that’s the nickel-and-dime strategy your former employer has chosen for you. You may have been a brand ambassador for 10 years, or maybe just one, but your employer is now willing to risk your eternal damnation.

That may be because the president wants to maximize a compensation package based on increasing shareholder value. Perhaps someone fell asleep at the wheel, or the economy veered off the highway, and a major course correction is needed to avoid certain disaster. Maybe it’s an unexpected outcome from corporate regulations?

Corporate stability is elusive.

Could the peaks and troughs in the rate of employment be leveled through better management and planning? Does legislation adequately manage our increasingly dynamic economy? Is there a greater societal role here?

Why don’t governments and corporations guarantee salaries for all, generating a more reliable level of tax revenue and consumer spending?

You’re not just a “lefty” for wishing your neighbor well in those terms. You would be called a Marxist. Politicians and CEOs are highly unlikely to fan the flames of what would be characterized as plans for a “welfare state.”

What am I missing here? Isn’t there a better way of handling layoffs, to protect and respect individuals, families, communities and the broader economy?

Don’t Let’em Get You Down

Employee layoffs get mostly impersonal treatment in the media. Like the HR people who deliver the news about corporate job cuts, journalists seem to accept the logic that layoffs are not personal, but necessary instruments of the free enterprise system.

The case for “career transitions” is presented by employers, accepted by the media and laundered by government and Corporate Canada. It’s a corporate balance sheet thing and a working Canadian may be forgiven for skimming over the media sidebars about their now-struggling neighbours.

The rhetoric that surrounds layoffs distracts from any personal injury. There’s talk about the rate of employment, merchandise inventories, retail sales levels and stock prices. Layoffs serve the “greater good,” they say.

Staffing reductions are just a footnote at fiscal yearend. They are characterized as “the normal churn of employee arrivals and departures” and acknowledged in a notation about “restructuring costs.”

Bay Street frequently speaks from two sides of its mouth when it comes to layoffs. There’s concern for the impact on retail sales and stock markets. But the prevailing forecast is layoffs are “good” for business. It’s always better to shed costs than to risk failure of a business, government, or the economy.

Even Canada’s Main Street residents borrow from the HR song book and say something like “getting the axe may be the best thing that ever happened to a person,” or “when one door closes, a window opens,” or maybe even “you were never happy anyways.”

Seemingly unbeknownst to that mob, layoffs may shred a person’s psyche. That’s because lots of people define themselves through their occupations, or even their employers. The greater the connection, the greater the impact of layoffs on their psyches, their communities, their former and future workplaces, and the economy as a whole.

Many “transition coaches” offer something similar to grief counselling to folks who find themselves stuck suddenly on the heel of today’s “dynamic” economy.

Even when an employee has a healthy self image, layoffs hurt. They mess with our minds. They ARE very personal. Platitudes are unwelcome, even when well intentioned. Condescension, even when unintended, is just downright mean. Avoidance is tactless.

This blog aspires to generate a dialogue that demystifies layoffs, while also building bridges and removing stigmas for people in transition.

It takes a community to reconstruct the momentum and confidence of the fallen. Let’s talk about it here. I have a few personal anecdotes to share. It would be terrific to reflect on your stories too.