Finding the Upside of ‘Downsizing’ : Laid-Off Worker’s Diary Offers Tips to Handle Situation
Arthur G. Sharp, who writes for a living, felt it only natural that he keep a diary after his employer, Travelers Corp., started a major cost-cutting program in late 1987.
At first, Sharp felt that his job was secure. One year later, he found himself among the 1,100 people whose jobs were eliminated in the restructuring of the Hartford-based insurance giant. The diary ends Jan. 31, 1989, Sharp’s last day of work for Travelers.
Next month, an expanded version of his journal--now called “Corporate Downsizing, An Employee’s Diary”--will be published by International Information Associates, a management consulting firm that has published several books.
The book is an attempt by Sharp, who headed the office that wrote internal newsletters and manuals at Travelers, to cut through the corporate euphemisms to show the effect that wide-scale cost cutting has on people. The diary entries show the anxiety that workers felt as rumors flew around Travelers, the way they reacted to bad news and how the uncertainties affected their daily lives.
Corporations “use downsizing. They use displacing. They use career adjustment. They use a lot of terms. No matter what it is, people are still out of work,” said Sharp, sitting at the kitchen table in his home. “The main thing I want people to remember is that there are humans involved in these downsizings.”
The last chapter of the book includes suggestions to employees on how to prepare for such cost cutting and suggestions to employers on how best to implement a savings program that involves cutting people.
Sharp, who had worked for Travelers for 21 years, urges workers to be prepared by taking advantage of education programs, building a network of contacts and updating their resumes. He also advocates that workers track down rumors that could affect their jobs and that they maintain a skeptical attitude toward management pronouncements.
He urges companies to keep employees informed of each step, to give them a chance to vent their feelings, to establish a voluntary departure program, to offer good separation benefits and assistance in finding a new job, to assure that the burden is spread between management and workers, and to insist that managers be available during the entire program.
Managers Disappeared
Sharp, 49, said Travelers did some things well, including compensating employees who lost jobs and helping them find new ones. He believes that the company faltered in communicating with workers--by the final days more news was coming from the news media than the company, he said--and by dragging out the program.
“I have come to the conclusion that Travelers handled the situation as best they could,” he said. “Yes, there were some inept managers. Senior management of the company mishandled it more than anybody. They disappeared at the end, when it was time to get rid of 1,100 or so people.”
Travelers spokesman Alan R. Fletcher said he could not comment on the book because it had not been made available to him. But he said the company sees the cost-cutting program, which also involved selling off several subsidiaries, as a success.
“We benefited from the experience,” Fletcher said, estimating that the program saved about $145 million annually. “Each task has been made more efficient and more productive.”
Suggestions Said to Make Sense
He said managers worked hard to lessen the anxiety and frustration created by the process.
Richard Bradley, vice president of the company publishing the book, said Sharp uses what happened at his former employer as an example of what has been happening at corporations nationwide.
“The book happens to be about Travelers, but it could have been anybody else,” Bradley said. “I don’t think it puts Travelers in a bad light at all. They did what they had to do. The point is it can be done better.”
Bradley said the book would be marketed to executives and business schools.
C. Boardman Thompson, a founding partner of a management consulting firm that works with companies laying off employees, said the suggestions all make sense, although he said several show Sharp’s perspective as a displaced worker.
Thompson, who works in the Stamford, Conn., office of Philadelphia-based Right Management Consultants, which helps discharged workers, has not seen the book but praised the idea behind it. He said managers can get blinded by the task at hand--cutting costs--and lose sight of their own feelings or the feelings of others.
“Losing your job hurts. It hurts a lot,” said Thompson, whose company assists other firms in handling the process that has become known as downsizing. “It is unnerving to most people. There is a grieving that people go through like a death or a divorce.”
The book includes anecdotes about people who worked with Sharp and the strain on their families caused by not knowing if they would lose their jobs. One family put off buying their dream house. Another couple, already in their early 40s, postponed having a second child.
Sharp feels that the Travelers and McKinsey & Co., the New York-based consulting firm brought in to help with its restructuring, cared more about the bottom line than people.
“Perhaps the executives directing the elimination of jobs and workers should be locked in a room with the affected employees and their families and be forced to watch their reactions to the news,” Sharp writes in his introduction.
Asked to analyze Sharp’s suggestions to management and workers, Thompson said most amounted to common sense.
“People tend to think: My employer will take care of me. They need to remember that loyalty and gold watches went out a long time ago,” Thompson said. “The Lord helps those who help themselves.”
