Layoffs are painful for everyone involved. But there are varying degrees of pain, and a theme in my practice is helping leaders who are conducting layoffs reduce the pain, not only for the employees losing their jobs, but also for everyone else. The recommendations below are by no means comprehensive, nor will they eliminate the pain of layoffs. But if you're a leader embarking upon this process, here's how you can make it less painful for these stakeholders:
Front Line Managers
You're probably planning the layoffs with a small group of senior leaders, in part to minimize the risk of leaks and rumors. If there are more than two layers of management in your organization, front line managers are unlikely to play a direct role. But when leadership teams fail to provide any advance notice to front line managers, they solve for secrecy while creating other problems.
Because immediately after the layoffs have been conducted, the remaining employees will reach out to their managers with any number of questions, including something like, "I heard what senior leadership said, but what's the real story?" And if those managers have nothing more to say than, "I don't know," they look and feel useless. It's a painful moment that can undermine managers' ability to offer support and reassurance in the future.
This can be mitigated by communicating with front line managers before the layoffs are conducted to give them a heads-up and provide additional context. One way of accomplishing this is via a synchronous virtual meeting conducted a few days (or, if necessary, hours) before the layoffs begin, but there are countless variations. The goal is ensuring that your managers are better prepared to respond to employees' questions and concerns because they're not hearing the news simultaneously. [1]
Employees Being Laid Off
Being laid off is always painful, but you have some choices to make that may cushion the blow. The first is scale--en masse, in small groups or individually. The least painful option will depend not only on the number of people involved, but also on their expectations of you as leader. In some cases people want to hear directly from the ultimate decision-maker, but at times that's not feasible, and it may be preferable for the message to be delivered by someone else. Even if you aspire to speak directly with each individual, note that your capacity to convey the message skillfully is finite, and as the numbers increase so does the likelihood that affected employees may hear the news before you reach them.
Another decision is when to shut off employees' access to email, messaging, and other systems. In some cases this is a non-issue--data security and other factors may compel you to restrict access as soon as possible. But here, too, note that solving for maximum security can create other problems, and not all systems pose the same degree of risk. Allowing employees to utilize various channels to say their goodbyes can afford them a degree of grace and dignity and will benefit the employees who remain as well.
Whatever medium you employ--but particularly if you're speaking live--you can make it marginally less painful for the people you're laying off by being thoughtful about your message. This includes taking responsibility for past decisions that resulted in layoffs being necessary. But it's not just about the content--it's also about expressing empathy through your tone. To be clear, empathy isn't sympathy--the latter is equivalent to pity, and your employees will not want your pity. Instead, empathy is the ability to grasp how someone else feels and to convey that understanding. This will entail acknowledging not only their pain at being laid off, but also a range of other possible feelings--surprise, fear, anger--some of which will be directed toward you. [2]
Employees Who Remain
As vital as it is to consider your communication with the employees who are being laid off, it may be even more important to follow this up with the right message to the employees who remain. Unfortunately many leaders take a misguided approach here, imagining that this is the moment to fire up the team. Their initial remarks to the rest of the organization have the feel of a celebratory speech at a rally--while everyone is still thinking about their colleagues who were just laid off. It's yet another painful experience, but one that can be prevented.
Yes, your remaining employees will need to be reinvigorated, and they will need to hear why you're hopeful about the future, and they will look to you for inspiration--but perhaps not quite yet. In the immediate aftermath of layoffs the employees who remain are likely feeling a complex mix of emotions, and it's essential to meet them there, at least at first. After a layoff the remaining employees typically suffer from a degree of "survivors' guilt," even if they agree that the layoffs weren't entirely random. [3] In most circumstances, they'll work through these feelings with time, but efforts to rush them can be counter-productive.
I'm not suggesting that the message to your remaining employees should be entirely downbeat or that you should refrain from expressing optimism--but don't start there. Begin by legitimizing whatever people are feeling at that moment. As I've noted before, "If the leader runs too far ahead or pulls too hard in an effort to bring people along...there's a rupture between the leader's vision of the future and everyone else's current reality, and the leader loses influence as a result." [4] There will be a point at which you can transition to looking ahead and invite your employees to join you--the key is to create that moment together with them rather than trying to impose it upon them.
Yourself
Conducting layoffs is one of a leader's most painful responsibilities. Even when you know that layoffs are needed to ensure the continued existence of the organization and preserve other employees' jobs, you're not going to feel good about it. And that's appropriate--negative emotions play an essential role in learning from experience, and you'll want to learn as much as possible from this one in order to avoid repeating it.
It will be useful to acknowledge those emotions, with a major caveat. Although your ability to convey empathy will involve emotional expression, your feelings will not matter at all to the people you're laying off. It's not their responsibility to empathize with you, so don't ask them to, even implicitly. [5] And while you'll need to be judicious about what you discuss with any other stakeholders, note that difficult emotions are always easier to manage when you can talk about them with someone you trust. [6]
The effort to strike the right balance in your message and to do so while under an intense spotlight will be depleting, so plan accordingly. Don't let the logistics keep you up the night before--finalize the details well in advance and make sure you're well-rested. Don't allow less important tasks to distract you--clear your calendar before and after of any optional events. And don't expect your efforts to be appreciated--everyone will be caught up in their own anxieties, and no one will be thinking about you. So be sure to end the day with people who care about you and who think of you as a friend, a family member, a human being--not a leader. [7]
Footnotes
[1] Who Needs to Know? How Will They Feel? (On Change)
[3] For more on layoffs and survivors' guilt, see the following:
- Layoffs, self-esteem, and survivor guilt: Motivational, affective, and attitudinal consequences (Joel Brockner, Jeanette Davy and Carolyn Carter, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 1985)
- Layoffs, Equity Theory, and Work Performance: Further Evidence of the Impact of Survivor Guilt (Joel Brockner, et al, The Academy of Management Journal, 1986)
- The Effects of Downsizing on Survivor Employees: A Literature Review (Alice Crawford, Loyola University Chicago Master's Thesis, 1997)
[5] The Difficulty of Empathizing Up
Photo by threephin.