COVID19 Layoff CHALLENGES
Ajith Kumar
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Watching your colleagues get laid off can lead to complicated feelings. Organizations should help their remaining employee’s process emotions like survivor guilt.
No matter how talented someone might be, there is no guarantee that their talents will translate into top performance. The science of human potential has generally illustrated that an individual’s overarching competence cannot be fully understood unless we also account for their emotional make-up, preferences, and dispositions. No matter how smart, knowledgeable, and experienced you are, there is generally a difference between what you can do and what you normally do.
This is one of the reasons why talent identification efforts fail: when employers focus too much on candidates’ potential — the best they could do if they were motivated to do their best — they forget that the critical outcome they should try to predict is what people are actually likely to do once they are in the job, in particular their typical performance.
During these hard times Lots of people would have lost their jobs.
We the top management from the companies should support our remaining employees after a layoff. We are the face of our employees.
While some may feel lucky to still be employed, others may experience mixed feelings. They may be relieved to still have a job but simultaneously guilt-ridden about the suffering of former colleagues who were let go. This type of “survivor guilt” is normally associated with the emotions people experience after facing a traumatic event or accident that look the lives of others, but it can also happen after corporate layoffs. It’s not uncommon for the employees left standing to wonder, why did I make it, but they didn’t? Or how am I going to face my friends who were released knowing that they’re in a tenuous financial situation while I’m still employed? Survivor guilt may be exacerbated by a perception that the company failed to recognize or reward trusted colleagues and friends and instead eliminated them.
Studies show that nearly three-quarters (74%) of employees retained after a layoff saw their productivity decline after it, while 69% said that the quality of their company’s product or service deteriorated. When these respondents were asked why they felt that way, they expressed feelings of guilt, anxiety, and anger. The good news is that workers who felt that their managers were visible, approachable, and open were more than 70% less likely to report a productivity drop and 65% less likely to report a decline in the quality of their organization’s offerings. These numbers show that leaders can make a big difference in helping retained employees deal with their survivor guilt.
Remember that work and life are interconnected
“Coworkers can become some of our closest friends, making work a trigger for pain,” says Jennifer Moss, author of Unlocking Happiness at Work. Losing a coworker to a layoff evokes feelings of grief, explains Moss. “Grief doesn’t just come with sadness and loss. Grief can also come fully-loaded with guilt, anger, uncertainty, denial, regret, and so much more.” If during the next staff video call, employees notice that previous team members are now absent, they may be distracted from the business at hand, thinking about why their others were laid off. So, the first thing to do is acknowledge what these “survivors” are feeling, while honoring the contributions made by their former colleagues. Encourage employees to reach out to former coworkers and ensure that, as a manager, you do as well, offering tangible emotional and job-search support, such as reviewing resumes, making networking introductions, and providing references.
Be candid
To help employees avoid becoming mired in — and distracted by — survivor guilt, managers should help them see the reasons for the company’s downsizing decisions and explain the other options that were considered. If the company is helping to ease the transition for those whose jobs were eliminated, by providing severance and career-transition services, for example, share those details, too. If some workers were furloughed rather than laid off and there are plans to hire them back when economic conditions improve, clarify that, as well. When employees understand that management is reshaping the company for future stability and growth while treating people with dignity and keeping opportunities open when possible, they will be more likely to respond with their best efforts.
Communicate consistently and transparently
While you may be tempted to avoid these difficult topics, doing so can further erode trust in management and the company. Frequent, open communication is critical to reassuring employees in a crisis and can be helpful in mitigating survivor guilt. Leaders at every level of the organization must engage with their people systematically and often. Companies should consider devoting a day or two to training and discussion sessions to help managers build their confidence in delivering empathetic and consistent messaging around layoffs. Virtual town-hall meetings, brown-bag lunches, and other open forums are useful ways to keep the dialogue open and give employees a chance to ask questions. Team leaders can start by adding 15 minutes at the end of their next few staff meetings to facilitate two-way communication and provide a safe space for employees to process their emotions about colleagues being let go. Make the effort to be approachable, visible, and candid. Address employees’ survivor guilt rather than ignoring it.
Connect work to purpose
Another strategy for helping your remaining employees shift their focus from guilt back to their jobs is to reorient them toward individual and group purpose. People find meaning when they see a clear connection between what they value and what they spend time doing. That link is not always obvious even in the best of times and is particularly tenuous during a global pandemic when those who are not on the front lines may feel that their work is less significant.
Once employees have had a chance to process their feelings about the layoffs and gain a better understanding of the decisions made, managers are in a great position to articulate the organization’s purpose and values and connect everyone’s work to them. The most effective way to do this is to share stories of how, collectively, you are making a positive difference in the lives of real people, including customers, employees, and communities. You can also remind your employees that they do their work in service of those they care about in their personal lives.
Amid layoffs related to the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s imperative to recognize the feelings and accommodate the needs of employees still in the workforce who are dealing not only with seeing colleagues lose their jobs but also, possibly, with personal challenges that are often invisible, undefined, and complicated. Leaders must show that they care by communicating transparently about the situation and listening while people process survivor guilt. They must also be willing to adapt and readjust to prioritize people over profits.
The word ‘disruptive’ has become an attractive one, but how is it that employees of ‘disruptive’ industries and companies do not like to be disrupted? Two can play this game, and sometimes the disruptor is not your competitor but Mother Nature, as it has happened in the post-COVID-19 universe.
Furloughs, layoffs, pay cuts and uncertainties are a part of capitalism, and startups are the ones leading it from the front. If you did not know this, you are, well, stupid.
Now for the employees who question the startup's poster-boy founders: By all means, call their bluff. It has become fashionable ever since the IT revolution began four decades ago, to glorify knowledge workers and sing praises for intellectual property and passion. Actually, it is a part of the motivation strategy in which no one tells you about the downside risks. At least mutual funds tell you in fine print to read the offer documents carefully. ‘Red Herring’, after which the Silicon Valley's famed business magazine was named, is a reference to the details in an IPO prospectus that mention potential risks in gory details.
Unfortunately, there are no ‘Red Herring’ prospectuses for employees. There ought to be one: I would love to start one with a short sentence: “You Signed Up For The Risk”.
Startup employees, unless they are pretty savvy ones, are like teenagers in a phase of infatuation described as ‘love’. We live in strange times where millennials are conscious about relationship statuses but they transfer their infatuations to their careers. Same thing, actually. Heartbreak is a heartbreak, be it work or relationship.
Wake up and smell the coffee. Not the free one in the bustling startup office but the one you have to pay for. Life is not a Starbucks lounge.
Even if it was, remember that the so-called free Wi-Fi is billed through the coffee you pay for, whose price is a multiple of what it costs them to make.
But there is a genuine problem – that of the valuation of startups. This is where we shift from Smart Alec founders promising the moon to eager young employees, to venture capitalists doing pretty much the same to the founders themselves. Unicorn valuations are part of the game in which zeros added to your potential wealth on the right-hand side of a number are part of the motivation strategy: Part of it goes to enthuse employees and founders, and part of it to impress media folks (many of them young, dreamy and as gullible as the employees). You see, they start building a corporate brand for an IPO or an acquisition long before the first customer has signed a cheque or made a digital payment.
Skills, Commitment, Risk Appetite, Alertness: What Makes ‘Real’ Startups Different
For the record, Silicon Valley is in the same state as Hollywood. Show business, Hotel California. Get the picture. Road shows for IPOs are no different from beauty parades or actor auditions. CEOs are often celluloid figures in silicon packages. Smart journalists sometimes go the extra mile, like one did about how Softbank’s OYO strategy was part of an attempt to boost or save itself.
Often, valuation hypes are part of an attempt to turn a corporate brand into a consumer brand to lure in future investors.
Venture capitalists are giant fish. Some are whales and some are sharks. You often don't get to see the inside of their mouths that otherwise talk a lot. CEOs/Founders are big fish. Employees are small fish often made to feel like big fish to help them gain swimming speeds. Cynical? Well, what do you expect from someone who has seen the dotcom bubble?