How You Do Layoffs - Matters

Thursday September 18, 2008

One industry that is hemorrhaging jobs is the newspaper industry. I hear about more job losses almost daily in this industry. I came across this thoughtful, hopeful post by Patti Ghezzi, When There’s No Home to Return To. Her sister was laid off from a city newspaper where she had been writing about food for eighteen years.

Sure, she was devastated to lose a job she loved but her prevailing attitude was to pick up the pieces, get on with her writing career, network, stretch her severance pay, and get on with her life with faith that all will work out.

Despite the fact that our future must include plans to deal with a shortage of employees for whom we will compete, many industries are laying people off. After acquiring Electronic Data Systems (EDS), Hewlett Packard plans to lay off 24,600 employees over the next three years. GMAC laid off 5,000 people. The list goes on. In addition to companies that have currently announced layoffs, this is the "24/7 Wall St. list of companies that will have to cut jobs, probably over 10,000 in each case, to make ends meet or improve earnings between now and the end of 2008": Ford, Citigroup, Sears, Washington Mutual, Rite Aid, At&T, AIG, Merck, the Gap, and IBM.

How companies treat their employees in a layoff situation matters. Their treatment matters to the laid off employee, of course, but it also matters to the remaining employees and their networks. This information will help you with layoffs that are as responsible as possible.

_{Image © Sheryl Griffin}

More About Responsible Layoffs

More Posts | All Topics | Most Popular | Newsletter