Layoffs are obviously difficult times for the employees in firms whose leaders have chosen to make the layoff decision. The difficulty increases if a firm does more than one round of layoffs. As layoffs have become more frequent in the faltering economy, some leaders are learning that serious issues exist for the employees retained, the so-called “survivors in the lifeboat.” The pain of the cutbacks is not reserved for those laid off. Leaders from front-line supervision to higher levels should be alert to the emerging issues of discomfort among survivors and try to avoid adding to the perceived woes of survivors. Good productivity from the survivors is not guaranteed.
Some pain-adding acts may seem trivial to a leader, but the leader should remember it is always the perspective of the receiver of a communication that defines the message, not the sender. After layoffs, there is obviously a need to have re-organization meetings with the employees who are remaining. But the timing of those meetings can pile on to the discomfort already felt by survivors who are seeing good friends and reliable co-workers shown the door. If the “last day worked” for those leaving is to be Friday, is it really necessary to have the needed re-org meetings on the Thursday before they go? There is often a leader who, in his/her enthusiasm for “putting all this behind us and getting on with the tasks at hand,” schedules the Thursday meeting. Can’t the matter wait until Monday? The leader should think of the additional discomfort of the survivor who not only is fretting about saying goodbye to a close associate, but must now make his own survival even more visible by striding off to the Thursday meeting while the laid off employee is left to fill the cardboard moving boxes the HR staffer brought around. We think a “decent interval” is a good idea and will improve the chances of the leader for establishing a degree of trust with the people in his/her corner of the lifeboat. Survivors will be feeling pain they don’t show and too much zeal for the quick re-org meeting can be perceived (silently) as a new kind of insensitivity. One leader who had been through a few rounds of layoffs told us, “I learned quickly that this ‘dance of the survivors’ is to be avoided if you want to keep the good will of your people who are left.”
There is also the problem of “orphans,” the survivors whose managers were laid off and who were thus re-assigned to a surviving manager. One of these orphaned people wrote to us recently and described the particular peril of the orphaned survivor. He said, “My new manager is affable and certainly competent enough, but she isn’t taking time to find out what I know or what I can do. The inclusion I felt before is gone. My personal visibility is now low. The work I did so well before has been assigned to others who simply don’t have the knowledge. I find myself making suggestions to people who don’t know to listen. I am now contributing little.”
The thoughtful leader, concerned for the ongoing productivity of the work group, needs to pause and make time…more than a trivial amount of time…to learn the backgrounds and skills and logical work for each inherited orphan. If the leader doesn’t do so, the orphan will lose self-confidence quickly and the omnipresent question “Am I next?” will take on an even more burdensome importance. Senior leaders must encourage….indeed, require…subordinate leaders to take such time. Otherwise it won’t happen.
Lethargy and fear can run through the “lifeboat” like a deadly virus if leaders withdraw and retreat and begin to say nothing about the company’s next steps. Even “I don’t know what’s next” is better than silence. Senior leaders should be as forthcoming as company strategy and any encumbering legal issues allow. Again, it’s the perspective of the receiver of a communication that defines the message, and “no communication” is itself a powerful message that endangers trust among those in the lifeboat.