Southern California Job Market : When Heads Roll : WHAT TO DO TO KEEP YOUR JOB OR PREPARE FOR A NEW ONE
More than 700,000 Californians have lost their jobs in the Great Recession of 1990-92. Give thanks if you’re not one.
Then get back to work. The days of surging growth and benevolent bosses, long lunches and genial ineptitude are gone. Companies across America have refocused on why they have workers in the first place, and by golly, they’re finding that in many cases they don’t need them.
More and more, showing up on time and putting in 40 hours won’t be enough to ensure workplace survival. Even doing a good job might not be enough.
Have you learned a new software program lately? Have you taken on a troublesome project that no one else wants? Have you saved the company some money today?
In other words, have you figured out how to make yourself indispensable?
No one is really indispensable, of course. But almost anyone can become invaluable. Just be prepared to inject much more of yourself into your job--maybe get some training after-hours, do a lot of self-evaluation and, above all, adapt to sweeping change at a moment’s notice.
Here are ways you can keep the ax-wielders at bay, according to the experts:
- George Bailey, consultant: “Find a client or customer for what you do and . . . find ways to meet the customer’s needs.”
- Kevin Hollenbeck, economist: “Employers want someone who’s reliable on a task and will do something when asked.”
- Peta G. Penson, consultant: “Look for the work that needs doing.”
- David Marshall, training executive: “Be trainable in new areas.”
- Stephen Saulten, personnel services executive: “Don’t be a high-maintenance person.”
- Dan Lacey, newsletter publisher: “Make sure that you are bringing more money in to the company than you are taking out.”
- Joyce Brothers, psychologist: “Don’t ask for a raise right now. This is not the time.”
In general, the push for produc tivity and the growth of new technologies mean specialization is out. Learning new skills is in.
It also helps to be a good politician.
“Your best protection essentially is to attach yourself to somebody who’s going to keep their job, even if it’s the third vice president for unneeded services,” says Stanley Bing, Esquire’s columnist on corporate life.
Be useful to as many people as possible. “If you have work outstanding for a number of internal clients in the company, then they’ll want you to stay,” Bing advises, adding: “If you can live through the budget time, then you’re good for another year.”
One way to prevent being laid off is to reposition yourself in the company. It’s called “in-placement,” and it’s the latest buzz word, according to William Morin, author of the book “Parting Company” (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich).
To do this, you must trust your abilities and skills. Have confidence.
“If you can wear two or three hats, you’re more likely to stay,” says James Challenger, president of the firm that bears his name.
But make sure your boss knows, for example, that you can handle marketing as well as research.
If think you might get laid off anyway, “stay cool,” says Morin, who is chairman of Drake Beam Morin, an outplacement firm. “It’s your greatest challenge.”
Then decide whether you want to stay in a company going through large-scale layoffs. The survivors of downsizing aren’t always happy, warns Jerome Rosow, who heads Work in America Institute Inc., a nonprofit research organization in Scarsdale, N.Y.
The company may be on its last legs. And survivors are often faced with longer hours, more stress, higher performance expectations and fewer layers of supervision. Layoffs may not even solve a company’s problems.
“Too many layoffs are acts of desperation,” Rosow says.
These days, you probably will want to stay anyway. Rosow calls the current labor market a “jungle,” and Morin observes that it takes 6.8 months for laid-off managers to find a new job. (That’s still an improvement over the 7.9 months it took in the fall of 1991.)
Blue-collar workers take an average of four months to land another job, Morin says. But Rosow says blue-collar workers laid off from high-paying industries, such as auto manufacturing, find jobs that pay, on average, 25% to 30% less than their old job.
For managers seeking equivalent pay and position, a new job may require relocating.
In the last two years, about a third of the managers that the Chicago-based outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas has worked with have had to relocate for new jobs, up from a historical rate of 20%.
Bear in mind also that although selfishness got a bad name during the 1980s, it will likely be the watchword for employees in the years ahead.
That’s because secure, long-term employment with a single company is becoming scarcer, and workers in danger of being laid off need to shift their priorities to themselves, according to employment experts. Challenger says bluntly: “Think of yourself before the company.”
Adds Morin: “Live life as if you can be terminated tomorrow.”
