As many of you know, The Thornton Group is fortunate to be consulting partners with Patrick Lencioni’s company The Table Group. Pat has been doing a lot of writing lately, and this ‘point of view’ entitled How Executives Botch Layoffs from the March 6, 2009 Wall Street Journal is particularly relevant these days.
In this article Pat talks about the three most common mistakes executives make during lay-offs:
- Don’t allow employees to leave with dignity
- Segregate ‘survivors’ from those who are leaving
- Assume that the survivors don’t need extra attention
I agree with all, especially the third point. In fact, I read somewhere that most companies spend 80% of their time and attention on the people leaving versus those who remain — counter-intuitive, don’t you think?
I’ll write more about this another time, but in the meantime, I’d love to hear your thoughts and ideas.
Thanks, Amelia
Tags: change management, employee morale, layoffs, Patrick Lencioni, retention, Table Group
I think the first and third points are counterintuitive. Would spending LESS time and attention on a layoff enable them to leave with MORE dignity?
Additionally, I would think the remaining employees would feel less of this “survivor’s guilt” that Andrew mentioned if they knew their company was sympathetic and trying to reach out to those laid off.
Of course I agree that it is important to keep your remaining employees focused and motivated. However, as an employee, it would be discouraging to know that in the event of an unfortunate layoff, I would be kicked to the curb and quickly forgotten.
Thanks for the comments, Ali. I absolutely agree with your second point about ‘survivors guilt’. When we went through a pretty large layoff when I was at Hyperion, one of the things I think we did very well was to make sure that people remaining with the company knew the details about the layoff packages (including outplacement counseling for all), and even had outplacement counselors on-site the day of. Our rationale (which turned out to be correct) was that we wanted those employees who remained to understand that we were treating those that were leaving with respect and dignity.
Patrick Lencioni’s last point (assuming that survivors don’t need extra attention) can also be addressed by the leader revisiting and spurring debate on the vision for the team. It is natural to be most concerned with the immediate future when layoffs happen, but survivors will be reassured by engaging with and maybe re-inventing the strategic vision. If they can see where they are going in the longer term, the immediate future gets put into better perspective.
Philip Pirie
I agree with Patrick Lencioni’s three points on poor management strategies during layoffs, but I take issue with your suggestion that it is counterintuitive for employers to focus more on those who are laid off than on the survivors.
In my experience as both a survivor and one who was laid off, the survivors watch very carefully how their departing comrades are treated, often communicating with them for weeks afterward and feeling “survivor guilt.”
By being considerate of the needs of those who are let go, management can keep the respect of their employees moving forward.
Good point and thanks for the opportunity to clarify. I agree with your comment, but believe that while ensuring that people leaving are treated with respect, dignity and fairness is critical, the majority of manager’s time and attention must be spent with the people remaining, to ensure the layoff achieves its intended result. Even worse than a layoff, is one that doesn’t work… Amelia