You’re a manager for a mid-sized U.S. company that’s been forced to slash its work force because of the global financial crisis. And you’ve just received a new assignment: You’re to take over a key department that was hit harder than most by the layoffs.
Morale and productivity have plummeted. Your mandate: Fix it.
It’s one of those assignments that can either be a career-maker - or a career-ender. You want to make sure it’s the former, not the latter, and need to make all the right moves.
What do you do?
In an economy in which the unemployment rate just hit a 25-year high of 9.4% - and is expected to go higher - and that’s seen 6 million workers lose their jobs since the U.S. recession started in December 2007, this situation is becoming more the norm than the exception. And with 14.5 million workers currently unemployed - and a "jobless recovery" in the offing - the population of U.S. managers who are asking the "what to do" question is going to spiral higher.
The report on the U.S. unemployment rate for June will be reported early today (Thursday).
No More "Business As Usual"
After a layoff, managers cannot go back to "business as usual" if they hope to have any control over workplace morale and productivity. In fact, managing for the survivors of layoffs should become a top priority for managers, personnel experts say.
Increasingly, "layoff-survivor syndrome" is becoming a common phrase, one that conveys the unpleasant reality that not being laid off is in some ways as tough as getting that pink slip, and that underscores that the people who remain on the job will have plenty of emotional challenges, much as do disaster survivors ("why him and not me?").
First, there’s the guilt. As might be expected, a majority of workers said they had feelings of guilt, anger, and anxiety, according to a survey by Leadership IQ, a Washington-, D.C.-based research-and-training company.
But the guilt, anger and anxiety have a real effect on the company: Three-quarters of layoff survivors say their productivity has declined, while customer service has worsened, the survey found. It also found that 69% of the remaining workers believe the quality of their company’s products or services has declined since the layoffs.
