After the layoffs …

By Nicole Lucht

Friday, July 3, 2009 | 3 a.m.

The day many in the office had worried about has come and gone.

The round of layoffs has been made.

Although there may have been a collective sigh of relief from those who survived the cuts, experts say that smart employers will try their best to help remaining workers deal with a range of issues.

Bosses need to understand that workers who have survived layoffs will be anxious about job security.

They also may be angry or confused.

In many modern workplaces employees don’t feel a long-term connection with their employers. Jobs are viewed as temporary, not lifelong commitments.

Layoffs reinforce that and workers’ feelings of instability.

“I don’t think it’s realistic anymore, or rational anymore, for workers to invest heavily when ... they’ve seen their colleagues or co-workers dumped summarily on a Friday, on a weekend, on a holiday, and (employers) do those things,” UNLV work sociologist Robert Parker said. Employers “just don’t care.”

Workers are worried about what they will do if they fall victim to a cutback.

“The severity of this recession, in particular, is causing people’s attention to be very focused on what they can do next,” Parker said. “The biggest thing that we’ve seen over the last 25 years or so is a real pronounced loss of loyalty or trust between employer and employee.”

If layoffs are necessary, management should try to make them all at once to remove any fear that more layoffs loom, said Arte Nathan, president of Strategic Development Worldwide, a management consulting firm.

“They have to be careful that they never say ‘That’s it,’ because employees are always worried about that,” he said.

Nathan was the longtime human resources boss for Mirage Resorts, serving from 1983 to 2000. He joined Wynn Resorts in 2003 and left in fall 2006.

Through his consulting firm, he has several clients going through the layoff process.

“It always come down, for me, to good communication,” he said.

Some might think that workers are anxious after a layoff because they feel bad for the co-workers who lost their jobs.

Not so, Parker said.

“Right now, people are really concerned about themselves and the immediate future because it’s not been this dire since the ’80s,” he said. “Everybody is in a bit of a box ... right now with this recession, people are really concerned about what they’re going to do next. Any concern about their colleagues who have lost their jobs is going to be passing and temporary because they know it could happen to them.”

Nevada’s jobless rate hit 11.3 percent in May, the highest rate the state has experienced since the Bureau of Labor Statistics started keeping track in 1976.

Despite the recession and the need for companies to reduce their payrolls in tough times, workplace experts says there are things employers can do to fend off the negative feelings workers may have.

Focus employees on a positive goal or mission, said Joan Burge, a management consultant and CEO of Office Dynamics.

“The people that are left have fear and anxiety because they see everybody else around them may be being let go,” Burge said. “You can’t really assure them. No one can say for sure that it won’t happen to you.”

But there’s a fine line between being honest with your employees and keeping them focused on their responsibilities, she said.

“I want (the employees) to be focused on their work and do a good job because I do have a smaller staff that’s left, but I also know that you can’t overpromise something that you really don’t know 100 percent,” she said. “Keep them focused on their current work, on their current job, what’s going on. The more informed you keep employees, the more comfortable they feel.”

Despite doing all the right things after layoffs, Parker said the challenge managers have is keeping workers motivated.

“(Managers) are very perplexed about what to do about this,” he said. “How do you keep people motivated and focused when probably most of them, or a significant number of them, are looking out the side of their eye for the next best opportunity to come along.”

The remaining employees already know that they have to do more work because there are fewer people, Nathan said. Although in some cases workers were laid off because there was less work, in most cases, there is still a lot of work.

Managers, he said, should figure out many ways to informally say thank you.

“Always remind the employees that (the managers) remember that they are doing more,” he said. “Continually say thank you.”

For workers, things are getting worse, Parker said. Even among his sociology students, many of whom are older and work while they go to school, he sees the stress caused by the recession.

“I have never had so many students where I have had simply to say, ‘Look, take it easy, stay home, don’t get on the roads, don’t stress,’ ” he said. “They don’t know what is going to happen to their jobs, they don’t know what’s going to happen to their husbands’ jobs, their health is threatened and they don’t have health benefits.

“I’ve never seen so many people in the same boat. They’re losing they’re jobs, they’re losing their income, they’re losing their houses, they’re seeing the value of their houses continue to decline, remarkably. A lot of people are going through incredible anger, anxiety.”

One solution, Burge suggested, is creating a team dynamic, such as developing a theme or motto focusing on the mission for the rest of the year.

Employees want direction, and they want to think their leaders know where they are going, she said.

“If the leader can’t clearly communicate, it gives the message that we don’t know where we’re going versus the attitude of ‘Here is exactly where we want to head and this is how we’re going to get there,’ ” she said. “Employees want to feel like their managers are the captains of that ship ... That doesn’t mean they aren’t going to go off course once in a while, but they have to set a direction to begin with.”

Meetings are a good way to help workers know what is going on. Meetings that focus on the coming week’s goals and past week’s accomplishments can also motivate employees.

And remember, the boss sets the stage, she said.

“They need to assess their own attitude and thinking,” Burge said. “If they’re walking around saying, ‘We’re never going to get sales, business is horrible, nobody is buying,’ people are going to hear that and that is what they are going to think.

“Employers need to come in and say, ‘Someone out there needs our product or needs our service. We just have to figure out who that is and how we’re going to get to those people.’ ”

Workers may also feel stress from additional responsibilities or lack of familiarity with newly assigned tasks.

“You have to be realistic with your expectations of the employees who are now managing the workload,” Burge said. “In other words, to expect everything to be done as quickly as things used to be done isn’t realistic. If you’ve got reduced staff, the employees who are left are taking on more responsibilities and possibly they are doing some work that they haven’t done in the past.

“They also have that learning curve so that they aren’t going to get it done as quickly. To expect them to produce at the same pace and deliver at the same pace as they used to isn’t realistic.”

It is important to invest in the workers who are still on the payroll, such as training them for the newly acquired tasks or projects.

And keep the lines of communication open — and honest, the experts said.

Management has to have regular meetings with employees to continue to explain the state of the business, Nathan said.

“I think more communication in this regard is better than less,” he said. “Normally you don’t like to talk a lot about these things but these employees are scared. The more information that they have, the less distracted they’ll be by their fear.”

He suggested outsourcing some of the employee communication tasks to public relation firms to help open the internal discussion.

“Most management teams tend to just go quiet,” he said. “I don’t want to talk about it, I don’t want to keep reminding employees (management will say). But that’s all the employees are thinking about.

“Management has the right to refer to the newspaper and say, ‘Let’s talk about the economy. Let’s talk about the impact on our business.’

“Engage the employees to come forward with recommendations of how we can manage in this new environment. Bring them into the process of decision-making and goal setting so that they’re part of the process rather than just part of the problem.”

If the employees’ new workloads seem to be getting the better of them, do a fair assessment, Burge said.

Burge suggests having employees keep a log of all of their work for three weeks. Then the manager should review the logs and decide which tasks are crucial to the company’s success and which tasks are busy work or can be deferred until later.

Employees will understand and welcome management’s efforts.

“They know what’s going on,” Nathan said. “They’ve got friends who are getting laid off, they see that business is terrible everywhere. So if they’re still (employed), if you thank them, if you communicate with them, if you ask their input, and you make sure that they feel included and welcome and you recognize their plight, I think you’ll get through it.”