Chapter 12
Lasting Through Layoffs
The Problem
Something big is happening in the senior ranks at your company, and it can’t be good. You’ve noticed lots of closed-door meetings and heard rumors of layoffs. Everyone you know feels vulnerable. You’ve seen colleagues chatting up muckety-mucks and taking them out to lunch, but that feels calculated and phony to you. You want to keep your job—and ideally take on more responsibility if there’s an opportunity—but not by glad-handing the leadership team. How can you protect your career without sacrificing your self-respect?
Why It Happens
Even strong companies go through reorgs, for a host of reasons: CEOs face constant pressure to do more with less. New leaders want to put their mark on the firms they run. Organizations rework their business models to stay competitive in evolving industries. When times are changing, even the most stable, reliable departments can be seen as obstacles to progress.
As much as we’d like our leaders to include us in any thinking about pending layoffs, they have to keep the information closely held. It’s probably painful for them to have those closed-door meetings—they know they’re about to make life-altering decisions. But the last thing they need is for panic to set in while they’re sorting out the specifics. There’s still work to be done. A company can’t lose its day-to-day momentum. And legal and security considerations may make it impossible to share information more widely—the organization can’t risk having employees take valuable data, contacts, or intellectual property out of the building when they get wind they’re going to lose their jobs. When layoffs do come, the news must be announced on a very tight schedule to control who knows what, and when, no matter how much compassion a well-intended manager may want to show his employees.
What to Do About It
When forces beyond your control threaten to reshape your organization, don’t just passively await your fate. Create a survival strategy. You’ll have a far better chance of sticking around and maybe even improving your position. This isn’t about playing games or backstabbing others—it’s about managing how decision makers perceive you and the value you bring.
Keep calm and carry on
It’s easy to imagine all kinds of things happening behind those closed doors. But you might be wrong. Or maybe you’re right to suspect a reorg, but there’s still plenty of time for names to change on a layoff list. Either way, it does no good to fly into a panic. Act like a survivor, not a victim. That’s what Harvard Business Review authors Janet Banks and Diane Coutu say in “How to Protect Your Job in a Recession” (September 2008), and it’s good advice no matter what the economic climate. You don’t have to be stoic or turn into a corporate cheerleader. But maintain your composure and professional demeanor—demonstrate your ability to focus and keep up your good work, despite swirling uncertainty. If you stop going full throttle because you might be out the door tomorrow, you’re not doing yourself any favors: You may land yourself a spot on the layoff list if one does exist.
So rise above whatever back-channel chatter may be consuming your colleagues, says leadership consultant Jessica Pryce-Jones. People who spend a lot of time whispering aren’t proving themselves indispensable. It’s natural that the topic of pending layoffs will come up, especially when the boss is out of earshot. And there’s always someone in the group who excels at sniffing out gossip and wants to share tidbits. But don’t indulge in those discussions—walk away from the coffee machine if the conversation devolves. Quickly get meetings back on track when people start griping instead of working. Be a leader, even if you aren’t officially one.
If you need to talk through your fears, turn to a trusted friend or relative. “Don’t air your concerns with colleagues or in a way that your boss might hear,” cautions one manager who has led teams through corporate restructurings several times in her career. That goes double for venting on Facebook or Twitter: It can only harm your chances of surviving if colleagues or managers see you as a complainer or, worse, a confidentiality risk.
That said, you’ll need to keep up your network connections in a time of job uncertainty, says communication and branding expert Dorie Clark—and social media will help you do that. She notes that LinkedIn activity can signal when layoffs are brewing: You’ll suddenly see lots of people in an organization updating their profiles and adding new connections. Get ahead of the LinkedIn rush, advises Clark. Refreshing your profile early on will allow your contacts to receive your skills and experience updates before hasty detail changes and requests to connect come through en masse from panicked peers. You can also start putting out feelers for informational interviews and job leads by touching base with former colleagues and superconnectors in your network. Often when people are laid off, they’re given just a few minutes to clean out their desks—and they’re not allowed to take any information, including contacts, from their computers. So make sure your LinkedIn connections are current and active long before you get called to HR for an unscheduled meeting. Also, tweet about industry trends you’re noticing, smart articles you’re reading—anything to show your contacts that you’re still engaged in your work.
Mentally prepare
If you’re bracing yourself for layoffs, much of your stress comes from losing control. Big decisions that will affect your future are out of your hands. Though you probably can’t prevent a reorg if one is in the works, you can get ready to weather one—which will help alleviate some of your anxiety.
Start by visualizing scenarios: What will you do if you lose your job? How about if you keep your job, but you end up on a team of one, doing work that was previously handled by six people? And so on. Develop a Plan B, C, and D, with strategies ranging from seeking a new position in the company to signing up with different headhunters to taking a sabbatical to consider what you’d like to do next. In practical terms, it’s always wise to keep your résumé up to date. But if you haven’t done that, give it a fresh look and see if you can jazz it up with new experiences, skills, and responsibilities.
Also, assess your rainy day fund—how long can you afford to be out of work? (Clearly, it’s not the best time to make a down payment on a new house or sign a lease that requires stretching your salary.) If you don’t have much of a cushion to fall back on, map out your expenses and see where you can start saving. All this helps you reclaim some control, which puts you in a more constructive frame of mind. You’ll be less inclined to engage in politically risky behavior, such as kvetching with colleagues, making bitter remarks to your manager, or openly surfing the internet and looking for jobs instead of doing your work.
And try to get a sense of how long the reorg process will take, says Pryce-Jones, so that you’ll know how far you’ll have to stretch your resilience. If you have a good relationship with your boss, ask about the time frame for pending decisions, or discreetly tap your broader internal network for clues.
Get ahead of your boss’s questions
Downsizing is often about streamlining operations. In large-scale restructurings, for example, companies typically focus on producing more and spending less, not on cutting specific individuals loose. With this in mind, Pryce-Jones advises, try to suss out your boss’s concerns—and help address them.
If you feel comfortable approaching your boss directly, do so, and present yourself as a problem solver. She might not be at liberty to let you in on specifics, but she may still welcome a proactive conversation. You could open with something like, “I realize you probably can’t share details at this point, but I’m guessing you’ve had to consider how we might do things more efficiently. If you’d like, I can share some ideas in a brief proposal. Am I jumping the gun, or would that be helpful?” Tell her you’ve been thinking through how the team can shave time off a complicated process, for example, or handle more tasks. Arm her with solutions to recommend to decision makers.
Position yourself
Don’t assume your manager and others above her already know how valuable you are. Show them, says leadership coach Susan Alvey. Write up your contributions to the company, and sit down with your boss to review them—even if the potential for layoffs isn’t out in the open. Your boss will certainly figure out that you’ve picked up the vibe, but there’s no reason to wait to put your best foot forward, as long as you don’t appear desperate or pushy. You’re indicating that you know she has difficult decisions to make and you want to make your best case to stay. Give her an updated résumé or just a list of bullets. But clearly spell out how you’ve added to the organization’s success. This makes it easy for her to forward your document or copy and paste from it as she formulates her plan. If she’s agonizing over which names to put on a layoff list, she may be grateful for reasons to keep you aboard.
Of course, don’t suggest other candidates for that list. Your boss probably knows where the dead wood is, and your pointing it out will signal that you aren’t a team player. This also isn’t the time to say how underappreciated you are or how much a layoff would hurt you (“I’m the primary breadwinner in our family”). That’s the last thing she wants to hear if she’s struggling with a tough layoff decision—and it can actually make you more vulnerable by giving you a pathetic aura. Rather, Alvey says, emphasize the positive: Remind your boss of projects and accomplishments that demonstrate your breadth and depth of skill and your ability to adapt.
Your goal is to make a strong case for why you deserve a spot on the new, streamlined team. Quantify the value you add to the company, suggests Clark. If, for example, you bring in revenue that offsets big costs, pull together a simple spreadsheet that highlights this. If it’s hard to calculate your impact in dollars—perhaps you’re a communications specialist, for example—find ways that you can keep score. Track the number of media hits you get for your company and how much your company’s Twitter following has increased since you’ve been leading its social media efforts. Do you work in an operational role? Document productivity improvements you’ve made. You don’t have to cite every achievement. Hit the highlights, and be ready to continue or deepen the discussion if your boss requests it.
REINVENTION: HANNAH’S STORY
WHAT HAPPENED:
Where I work, a major restructuring brought two previously battling divisions together. My boss and the other unit head became comanagers of the combined group, so neither division “won” over the other. But as they began to articulate a vision for the newly formed unit, I could see that my role would soon become outdated.
WHAT I DID:
I polished up my résumé, highlighting skills that I knew would be useful in the new structure, and shared it with my managers. And I asked lots of questions about changes to our strategy and business model to show that I cared about where we were headed as a group. Essentially, I reintroduced myself to my managers and proposed changing my role to better support their evolving goals. I was genuinely enthused about the possibilities I’d identified, which I think showed.
DID HANNAH GET IT RIGHT?
By clarifying what her role could become—and showing that she had the skills and experience to pull it off—Hannah secured a place for herself and for several of her direct reports in the new order. Though she didn’t know for sure whether she’d have a job after the dust settled, she acted in a way that said “I’m with you,” which signaled strength, flexibility, and loyalty. She figured out how she and her team could help her managers implement their strategic plans instead of waiting for them to sort everything out.
Still feeling uneasy after reviewing your skills and contributions with your boss? You may want to discuss alternatives to layoffs. Say you’ve learned that your organization is cutting a certain amount from its budget. Would you volunteer to go half-time to keep your job? Could you suggest job sharing? “It’s a risky strategy,” Alvey says, because you might give something up without needing to. But you may be able to have an honest conversation in the abstract: “Would it make a difference if some people went part time?” Talk about possibilities without necessarily offering yourself up as a sacrificial lamb. If you enlist your peers to have similar conversations with your boss, the team effort might succeed without costing individuals too much. But if your colleagues get scared and back off, you could find yourself the only one with a thinner wallet.
Engage at a higher level
Pryce-Jones urges her coaching clients to learn everything possible about the company’s new direction or strategy. Be curious. Ask good questions: Why has the strategy changed? What were the driving forces? And keep up with news about your industry. If you understand the larger context in which your company is operating, you’ll better equip yourself to survive changes. “Be as proactive as you can as soon as you can,” suggests leadership consultant Ron Ashkenas. “The more you can be part of the discussion, the more you can influence it.” Talking with your boss has already given you some perspective, but find out what pressures other departments face. Speak with other unit heads and peers with internal influence. It’s entirely possible that your boss won’t have any say in the specifics of the layoffs at all—higher-ups are making those decisions. So it’s critical to make yourself known, in a positive way. The more perspectives you gather, the better informed you’ll be. And if people can see that you’re a curious, intelligent participant in conversations about the company’s future, you’ll increase your chances of being part of it.