Workers Who Survive Layoffs Face Trauma Too : Downsizing: Watching their colleagues pack up, employees left behind can’t help thinking: If it happened to them, it can happen to me.
Everyone at the company knew it was coming. The rumor mill had whispered “layoffs” for months. So, last April, when a Midwest food manufacturer laid off 200 employees--from mid-level management down to the mail room--the only surprise was the gut-wrenching feeling among the survivors.
“It was a shock first of all,” recalls a 46-year-old clerical worker at the firm who watched sadly as three colleagues in her department boxed their personal things and walked out.
“I felt bad. All of them were real loyal to the company so you got to think anyone can go any time. . . . I’m still wondering about my job. I know a lot of other people here who were scared and still are.”
When corporate downsizing empties the next desk or work station, laid-off employees aren’t the only ones whose lives change suddenly. Those who remain may still have their jobs the next day, but according to career and workplace experts they also face mixed feelings and frustrations typically shared by survivors of any kind of trauma.
“They are frightened, suspicious, disappointed and paranoid. They suffer a whole range of negative feelings,” said Robert Swain, co-founder and chairman of the New York-headquartered outplacement consulting firm Swain & Swain.
“The survivors are shellshocked and very frightened--because they know they could be next,” says Carol Kleiman, a nationally syndicated career columnist and author of “Career Coach” (Dearborn Financial Publishing, $15.95).
And at this time of year, when holidays are on a collision course with companies that would risk a Scrooge reputation to reduce losses and make operating statements look better before the calendar runs out, layoffs are especially taken personally--even by those who escape them.
“Survivors have a great burden on them, a double burden,” says Kleiman, adding that she receives lots of letters from tormented survivors of corporate restructuring who ask for advice. “They feel terribly guilty about their friends and colleagues who were let go. People feel totally distraught about it.”
Savvy survivors also know they could be next. Studies show companies that undertake one round of downsizing more often than not do it again. “The survivors have to worry not only about the people who aren’t there anymore but about their jobs,” Kleiman says. “And they feel anger at the employer who did this. The one thing the employer can’t say is it’s not going to happen again.”
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And that’s what the survivor wants to hear--that it’s not going to happen to them.
“We are seeing people displaced right now who I would never have thought would ever be displaced,” says Swain. “The loyal soldier, the steady worker . . . and that’s causing a lot of tremors in organizations. People say, ‘By God, if old Henry can get it, anybody can get it.’ ”
Kleiman says despite the mistrust and feeling of jeopardy that has pervaded their work lives, survivors can’t do anything about the course of events themselves, except to deal with it and put it aside. “The truth is you cannot dwell on it forever,” she says. “And you cannot apologize for being there.”
But some companies, worried about plummeting productivity in the aftermath of layoffs, have begun “re-educating” survivors about the new work world they are still part of.
“What we do is walk back on the battlefield and take a look at a fairly beleaguered group of people,” says Swain, who for the past year has provided “survivor training” to corporate clients reducing their rosters. He calls the program “managing change training.”
“Our goal is a redefinition of the workplace, a recommitment to the organization and a renewal for the individual,” says Swain, who estimates that 30% of companies slimming their ranks have “caught on” and try to address the productivity and personal problems that simmer among the survivors.
Although Kleiman agrees that survivors need to get themselves beyond the shock of the layoff, she isn’t convinced of the corporate goodwill behind survivor training programs.
“My ultimate message is, ‘If you know this is going to happen, get yourself ready for it,’ ” she says. “You have to be proactive about this; you can’t be helpless.”
Kleiman recommends survivors do this after a downsizing:
* Volunteer to do the work that needs to be done.
* Keep informed about the company’s financial status and plans by asking questions, reading business publications and keeping an ear to the office grapevine.
* Be supportive of the other survivors who need each other, because the company has no loyalty to you.
* Update your resume.
