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Those who do survive “the ax” often feel conflicted. It’s called “survivor syndrome.” Psychologists often look for it in people who survive disasters such as car or plane wrecks. Now it’s afflicting workplace survivors, as well. Although the obvious victims of layoffs are obviously the poor souls who lose their jobs, layoffs can also have a devastating psychological and emotional impact on the surviving employees, too.
“On the one hand you’re happy to be alive, a positive emotion,” says Columbia Business School professor Joel Brockner, a leading expert on corporate survivor syndrome. “But it’s sprinkled in with a heavy dose of negative emotion: ‘Maybe it’s not over.’ ‘It could happen to me.’”
Anxiety Rules
Playing musical chairs probably made you anxious when you were a kid. It’s 10 times worse now, when the last chair represents a spot on your employer’s payroll. Most surviving employees express overwhelmingly negative feelings about the changes that occur in the wake of a downsizing. As Groucho Marx said, “Whatever it is, I’m against it!”
David Noer, vice president of training and education for the Center for Creative Leadership in Greensboro, North Carolina, and author of Healing the Wounds (1995, Jossey-Bass), uses a metaphor of surviving children to illustrate the conflicts experienced by employees who remain in a downsized work force.
Imagine a family that’s been together for a long time. The loving parents and well-behaved children live in a nurturing, trusting environment. Then, one morning at breakfast, the mother makes an announcement. After reviewing the family budget, she and the father have come to realize that they can’t afford to feed and clothe all four of their children. Two of them will have to go. Nothing personal, the father explains. They still love their kids. They just can’t afford them anymore.
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The next morning at breakfast, two of the chairs have been removed from the table. All evidence of the two missing children is gone. No one says a word about their absence, and any feelings either the parents or the kids have about their absence go unspoken. The parents stress to their remaining children that they should be grateful to be able to stay in the family. To show their appreciation, the children will be expected to take on additional chores that their siblings used to do. The parents assure the kids that this will make them a closer family.
What do you think the children who are left behind are feeling? Sadness at having lost their siblings? Guilt over being allowed to stay in the family? Anger at their parents for changing the rules midstream? Anxiety and panic over their own future? Or perhaps they feel nothing at all because it’s too dangerous to feel.
Similarly, survivors of downsized organizations often feel depressed, paranoid, angry, numb, and betrayed. Couple that with reduced commitment, risk-taking, and spontaneity and you have the formula for what Noer terms, “Layoff Survivor Sickness”—a paralyzing condition caused by the profound shift in the psychological employment contract between individuals and organizations.
You can point the finger of blame at your employer, but it won’t help much. Most layoffs are an inevitable consequence of new social and economic forces, not organizational malice and incompetence. And although many organizations bungle the layoff process badly, you must accept the responsibility for managing your own career amid the chaos if you choose to stay with the company.
Get in Touch with Your Emotions
“After a downsizing, the environment can be like emotional quicksand,” says Englewood, Colorado, career counselor Linda Bougie. “There’s a real loss of control, like everything that’s happening is out of your hands.”
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Maureen Gold, the director of Baxter Healthcare Corporation’s career center in Deerfield, Illinois, agrees: “When an organization is going through a lot of change, it’s harder for people to take control of their careers because the overwhelming message is that you don’t have control.”
Your first goal should be to take stock of your feelings and, if necessary, make some positive deposits into your emotional bank account. How can you do this? Synergies are hard to achieve when your company is downsizing. Knowing that, your goal is to rebuild damaged relationships and forge new alliances with people in the organization you still esteem and trust. Says Gold: “People you respect can be energy sources that keep you motivated.”
Although you might feel compelled to avoid mentioning the layoffs when talking with colleagues, emotional honesty can go a long way in an anxiety-ridden environment. On the other hand, unexpressed fears and feelings tend to gain power and momentum, sabotaging relationships and paralyzing productivity.
If you’re a manager, you can help interrupt that cycle, and it won’t cost the company a thing. Simply encourage your people to express their feelings and fears openly. But don’t react negatively to what they say. Also, let them know that what they’re experiencing is perfectly natural under the circumstances. Talking about your own feelings can establish a healthy atmosphere for discussion. One senior manager was able to reconnect effectively with his staff this way. “Believe me,” he told them sincerely, “I feel as bad about this as you do.”
Similarly, an operations manager called a meeting in which all of his remaining group members were encouraged to vent feelings and discuss personal reactions to the layoffs. Noer says such “leading from the heart” is critical to the recovery and success of downsized organizations.
If you aren’t an executive, you can still improve your situation by encouraging your boss to open up the lines of feelings and communication. Rather than wait like a powerless child to see what your crazy
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company is going to foist on you next, why not find your own voice and message amidst the confusion?
Think about those metaphorical children. What if they stood up to their parents and said: “Your priorities don’t make any sense to us. Isn’t there a way to improve our finances without destroying our family?” What if they suggested more acceptable alternatives to breaking up the home? For example, the kids could work after school to supplement the family income through paper routes, dog walking, or lemonade stands. They could volunteer to live with a treasured aunt and uncle until finances got better. Or, perhaps the family could cut expenses by renting out rooms or moving into a smaller place.
Devise New Solutions
There are always other options. Maybe you can help your employer discover better solutions. That’s what happened at Rhino Foods Inc., a dessert manufacturer in Burlington, Vermont. At a companywide meeting, management announced that business had slowed so much that they could no longer justify the number of people on staff. Then they invited employees to find a way to solve the problem, and 26 jumped at the chance.
After studying the issues for three weeks, the group developed the idea of an Employee Exchange Program, an in-house temporaryemployment agency that “lends” extra workers to other companies. Employees who volunteer for assignments are interviewed, hired, and paid by the “host” company, but they retain their benefits through Rhino. And if the host company has a lower hourly wage, Rhino makes up the difference. So far, the only downside has been more paperwork. But then layoffs create additional paperwork, too.
Manage Others’ Expectations of You
It can be hard not to act out, to remember that you’re an adult and a professional who was hired because your employer believed you had the skills and desire to help the organization achieve its goals. So many
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adults regress and start acting like children who have no place to go and no one to play with.
An investment banker who works for a New York–based firm managed to “stay adult” and professional despite institutional obstacles. When the banker was asked to join his firm’s restructuring task force, he knew it would be important to participate. He also knew that the responsibility would be like having a second full-time job. His dilemma: how to handle both duties without working 18or 20-hour days. What he needed, he decided, was to work smarter but not necessarily harder.
His three rules of participation were the following:
1.Never work more than a 12-hour day. A devoted family man, he acknowledged openly that spending evenings at home with his wife and two daughters was important for his sanity. Although he was willing to begin his workday early (6 a.m.), he also planned to be on the 6:15 p.m. train home. You could set your watch by him. Unless it was an absolute emergency, he never deviated from his schedule. As a result, his employers and co-workers knew exactly what to expect from him.
2.Don’t expect perfection. By nature, he was a meticulous man who dotted every i and crossed every t. He also knew that if he maintained that work style, he’d soon fall far behind. So he lost the perfectionist mentality and developed personal standards of “good enough” that kept his reputation for able work intact.
3.Share your goals. Always considered a star performer, the banker knew he could never produce the same results with so much added responsibility. Rather than try to achieve some impossible goal, he renegotiated his sales objectives with his manager and then worked diligently to deliver what he’d promised. Not once did he beat himself up for not delivering the sales figures he’d achieved in previous years. However, getting his manager to buy into his new goals was crucial to his success. Otherwise, it would merely have looked as if his performance was way off.
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Unlike other highly motivated and ambitious professionals, this savvy careerist didn’t get seduced into taking on more than he could possibly accomplish. By managing the expectations of the people around him, he preserved his own energy and enthusiasm for his work.
Accept Your Limitations
While acknowledging that you’re neither a machine nor a superhuman always carries some risk, you don’t do anyone a favor by refusing to accept or understand your personal and professional limitations. “Unless you learn to set boundaries and prioritize your work, you can end up going down with the ship,” says Bougie. That’s exactly what happened to the assistant dean of a prestigious liberal-arts college in Chicago. When his support staff was eliminated, the administrator didn’t adjust his goals to accommodate that loss. Instead, he tried valiantly to do the job of three people. In his case, this meant singlehandedly servicing more than 1,200 students. His reward: ulcerated colitis. He also got a year off, which he needed to recover his health and sanity.
An operations analyst with a consulting group in Chicago had better success with a more aggressive style. To prevent an overload of demand on her energies, she moved her office to a location removed from her colleagues. She also convinced her manager to let her work at home two mornings a week in order to get some uninterrupted work time.
Keep in mind, though, that even your most innovative solutions won’t be considered seriously unless you have a solid track record of professional credibility. You need to establish yourself as a hardworking and committed team player who’s willing to go the extra mile before asking your employer to go out of the way for you.
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