I was cleaning out some files when I came across this Haiku by John C. Johnson of Minneapolis.  It’s very powerful and extremely relevant to today’s downsized organizational world.  I particularly like the third stanza.                                                

Rejected from my own dreams by characters that look like me.

Like the parrot in my aviary, I wasn’t strategic enough.

I wasn’t warned of the health hazards of security.                                                

So your approving nods didn’t mean I was on the high talent list?

I missed the memo that said the game I learned had been changed.

I deferred my life to the promise of pension and heated parking.

So now I go, but you friend, avoid the coffee break to say goodbye.

Level 1  Managing the Process

Level 1 interventions deal with the process, the way layoffs take place from the survivors’ perspective.  Although these interventions occur at the tip of the layoff iceberg, they are tactically important.  They keep survivors from sinking too deeply into depression and guilt, helping them stay afloat until other, more permanent, interventions can be applied to pull them out. 

 A key level -1 intervention is facilitating communication.  It is important for managers to communicate everything that is going on.  It is often difficult for managers to stimulate and maintain the free flow of information.  Instead, they often begin to manage it, to control it.  Announcements are carefully crafted and scripted.  Comments made when walking around are rehearsed. They are also under some pressure not to tell the truth.  People want them to say, and they themselves want to say, “It is over.  Your job is safe.”  It is never over. 

 Level 2: Facilitating Grieving

Level – 2 interventions help unblock repressed feelings.  Even in the best handled layoffs, survivors feel violated.  Since organizations often have strong norms against employees’ even admitting the presence of survivor emotions, let alone sharing and dealing with them, interventions must tease out repressed emotions.  Although some survivors have support systems that allow them to sort out their feelings, the majority of layoff survivors have no personal or organizationally sanctioned outlet for anger and fear.

 The bad news is that repressed anger and other emotions are widespread.  The good news is that an intervention process is not difficult to start, and once it is started the feelings do come out.  Although individual counseling is useful, I have found group-work the most effective and efficient method of bringing survivor emotions to the surface.

 Level 3: Breaking Organizational Codependency

If your sense of self-esteem and value is based on keeping your job, pleasing the boss, or keeping the old-paradigm system in tact, you are susceptible to organizational codependency. To break organizational codependency individuals must maintain internal control, keep their personal power, and love themselves without making this love conditional on organizational approval

 Level 4:  Building a New System

Organizations operating under the old contract assumed employees would be there for the long haul.  They rewarded tenure with strategies ranging from giving out tie bars and wall plaques in recognition for extended service to providing employees with recreational services and benefit plans that tied them in over time.  This is not a good system. Many employees are locked into organizations that do not want them and where the employees do not wish to remain. 

 Organizations typically do not like to think of themselves as paternalistic, but the reality is that most past cultures too pride in “taking care” of their employees.  Employee catering was a central part of the old employment contract.  It is difficult to reverse but it is no longer beneficial to either party.  On the one hand, it creates dependent employees who do not develop the skills necessary to be mobile in the marketplace, and on the other hand, employers are finding it impossible to hold up their end of the bargain.  Organizations must facilitate the new employment contract such as letting employees plan their own careers.  Individuals must work to break codependency and resist putting all of their social and emotional capital in the organizational vault.

Layoffs continue to be a part of the human resources landscape.  A current example is the planned merger of AT&T and T-Mobile.  If it is consummated downsizing is sure to follow.  I find it amazing that with the layoff history of the telecommunications industry there is no apparent strategy to develop a resilient, self-empowered workforce.

 Instead, the strategy continues to be to make employees dependent on the organization and that dependency will most certainly result in layoff survivor sickness which, in turn, will result in decreased productivity and less creativity.

 As the folk song goes, “When will they ever learn?”  I think the old employment contract is very deeply ingrained in our human resource culture.  It seems easier to control a dependent workforce and control and dependency is the name of the game in the old psychological employment contact.  I think most big companies are afraid of an empowered, independent workforce and that fear will cause them to loose good employees and not have the resilience necessary to survive the continual waves of downsizing.

Here is a story that depicts the reality in today’s organizations.  It was told by a rather theatrical, but very effective, executive.

A newly appointed general manager began his first meeting with his staff by showing them two large glasses side-by-side on the conference table.  There was a third, smaller object, on the table but it was initially covered by a cloth napkin.  Both glasses were filled to the mid-point with a dark liquid so as to make its position in the glasses visible. He held up the first glass and asked the group, “How would an optimist describe this glass?”

“Half-full,” some of the group responded.

He poured the contents, which turned out to be tea, into a pitcher and held up the second glass. “What would a pessimist say about this one?”  

“Half-empty,” the group said in unison, getting into it.

Again, he poured the tea into the pitcher and, with a flourish, swept the napkin away, revealing a smaller glass filled to the brim.  “What happened to this one,” he asked?  This time the question was rhetorical. “The other glasses were too big. This one has been re-engineered – downsized,” he shouted!  Moving to his three main points he pointed out that the organization had too many employees, too few orders, and too little money.  He then broke out an empty small glass for each staff member and, in an eerie, last supper-like process, poured them each some tea as they proceeded to plan a significant layoff.

I just returned from Las Vegas where I worked with a group of sales professionals and sales managers.  They work in a very competitive industry and their company culture values loyalty. 

 We had a very interesting discussion over my concept of “cautious loyalty.”  By that term I mean that no-one wants to work for or with a one dimensional mercenary who is loyal only to her or him self.  On the other hand, it is not a good financial or psychological decision to blindly trust that loyalty is always reciprocated by employment security.

 Unless an employee works continually to keep their skills honed and marketable and networks outside their employer they are setting themselves up for big problems because, in the new psychological contract, no employer can guarantee employment security.

 Some HR people and a few managers had difficulty with the concept.  They liked the loyalty idea but not the “cautious” adjective.  Difficult though it may be, organizations can’t have it both ways and it is not fair to ask employees for their trust and loyalty without also cautioning them to hedge their bets.

 Like other paradoxes, “cautious loyalty” requires the ability to keep two, seemingly contradictory ideas alive at the same time.  One way of looking at it is that you can be loyal to your job, your customers, and, to some extent, your career.  You, however, begin to run into trouble when you are loyal only to one firm because, in today’s environment, that is a very fragile and unpredictable relationship.

I’m often asked what overall strategies organizations can employ throught the system to help deal with layoff survivor sickness and revitilize downsized organizations.  Here is a list of  ten strategic responses along with related actions.    This is a good checklist when planning system-wide interventions.

         Strategy                                                Actions

I had a phone interview with a consulting firm in India that wanted some tips on dealing with layoff survivor sickness.  The person I talked to reminded me that, in many cases, we have stopped exporting jobs, and are now exporting layoffs.

 When US firms cut back offshore production, they export layoffs.  What I really found interesting was that in many parts of the world, the old psychological contract is alive and well.  People expect that the company will take care of them and are, thus, deeply organizationally codependent and susceptible to layoff survivor sickness.  Probably more so than in the US and Western Europe where the new psychological contract has been in effect longer and the culture is different than in high context countries.

 This has implications for US and Western firms attempting to manage a global workforce.  They need to develop strategies to deal with layoffs in countries that have deeply ingrained collective cultures that create an employee/employer dependency relationship

One major difference between this recession and those of the recent past is that layoffs are global and not restricted to just the private sector.  I recently wrote an article in Faith and Leadership a publication of Duke University’s leadership education function in their Divinity School.  It is appropriate for this audience because The need to help survivors overcome layoff survivor sickness is just as prevalent in the non-profit sector as in business organizations. 

 Religious institutions, too, are downsizing and when they do it often results in deeper survivor symptoms than in private industry.  This is because of a basic structural codependency. Employees of faith based organizations, administrative and clergy alike, define who they are by where they work, and when their job is threatened, their sense of purpose and relevance is also threatened.

 The key to breaking this codependent relationship is the same as for secular organizations.  Employees need to define who they are by what they do, not the specific organization in which they do it.  When a person looses their employment with a unit of a faith based organization, they do not loose their faith or their belief system.  They just loose a job.  It is as simple and complex as that!

These ten questions are designed to facilitate a dialogue and open communications.  I have used them, or similar questions, when working with management groups.

1.  What is the future of the time honored strategy on the part of organizations of “capturing the total being” – tying the employee’s sense of direction, purpose, and self-esteem to the organization?

 2.     What are the implications of placing all of your emotional and social eggs in the organizational basket – defining who you are by where you work?

 3.     What are the implications of the new employment contract in regard to motivation, loyalty, and commitment?

 4.     How do you manage and lead employees within the context of the new employment contract?

 5.     What are the implications of the new reality on the organizational communication process – upward, downward, and laterally?

 6.     What do you tell your children in regard to the world of work and career planning?

 7.     How do you deal with the “chronologically gifted employee” who began her career under one set of assumptions (the old employment contract) and is struggling to end it under another set of assumptions (the new employment contract)?

 8.     What are the implications of the new reality on the service and mission of non-profit organizations?

 9.     How can grieving and emotional catharsis be achieved in the world of work and is this a legitimate role of the organization?

 10. How should you as an individual and your organization respond to the “new reality” – wait for it to go away – accept it as permanent – find a middle-ground?