Garrett Mintz: Survivor’s guilt: 3 ways to build morale after layoffs

A company might have over-hired during a period of steep growth in anticipation of potentially continuing that growth.

Or a company had a client that represented a large percentage of total revenue leave, and leaders are trying to figure out where to come up with the revenue to pay for everyone’s salaries.

Or a company has gradually fallen on harder times and has decided that restructuring how the organization looks and operates is critical to being successful in the future.

Or a company could have had an informal layoff in which leaders decide not to fill open positions and ask those who are left to take on the additional work.

Layoffs are part of a business’s natural ebb and flow. One could argue that if a company isn’t putting itself at risk of having a layoff (e.g., hiring to pursue new opportunities), it isn’t effectively preparing for opportunities for high growth.

But what happens to those who are left?

Those who are left often feel a sense of survivor’s guilt—as if they are the lucky ones for not getting fired. What comes next is burnout because employees are now being asked to do the work of multiple people after growing accustomed to doing the work they had been doing.

Once burnout occurs, people start to formulate their own assumptions about what is next for them and the business.

As a leader of a company, here are three things you can do to help build back morale after a layoff:

1. Control the narrative

If leaders don’t control the narrative after a layoff, employees will come up with their own narrative. For example, I interviewed one leader after her company had layoffs, and she told me about a rumor of a merger or acquisition. She had no idea where that rumor came from. As the second-largest shareholder in the company, she reassured her team member that a merger or acquisition was not going to happen, but she couldn’t help but wonder where the idea started and how many other rumors might be flying around that she had no idea about.

To minimize surprises around a layoff, some leaders will practice open-book management or share the business’s finances with all employees.

The challenge with the assumption that employees who know the financials will be less surprised if a layoff happens is that the employees don’t know how an executive team will react to multiple down revenue months in a row.

Companies also often face the challenge of leadership happy talk, when a charismatic leader (oftentimes the founder or CEO) says things like, “We have been around for 25 years and aren’t going anywhere!”

This talk, when times are good, boosts morale and makes people feel secure. But when a layoff happens, it completely erodes morale, and the trust employees have in the company moving forward is severely tarnished.

To control the narrative for employees left after a layoff, leaders need to share why their performance justified keeping them and how they help the business grow.

2. Make people feel heard

There was a prison study in which inmates were to submit feedback on the state of the cafeteria food. This suggestion box had always existed in the cafeteria, but the results of the dining experience never seemed to change. Leadership in the prison wanted to get Likert scale feedback on the quality of the dining experience in the prison and, to little surprise, scores were very low.

Eventually, a leader within the prison decided to do something different. He decided to read all the suggestions out loud in front of all the inmates.

Then, something interesting happened. The scores for the quality of the dining experience at the prison improved on the Likert scale. The prison didn’t, in fact, do anything to improve the dining experience for the inmates, but leaders let them know they were heard.

The same holds true for employees.

I am not advocating for gaslighting the employee experience, but what I am writing is that helping employees feel heard, even if the leader can’t do anything about their concerns, is much better than ignoring employee concerns altogether.

3. Elaborate on the why to the nth degree and repeat, repeat

Too many leaders assume that all employees are privy to all the information the leader has and should therefore understand why certain decisions were made.

Too many leaders assume that explaining why a decision was made once is sufficient. This is a toxic assumption because employees don’t have all the information leaders have. And explaining the situation once might not be enough—leaders also need to explain the why.

This might seem like overkill, but leaders being abundantly clear about how the business operates and the numbers required to thrive empowers employees to know where they stand with the business. Then repeat, repeat, and repeat some more. And when you feel like you have shared this message a million times, share it one more time just to be safe.

Oftentimes, employees need to hear a message multiple times in order to understand what the message means and its ramifications for them. Overall, building back team morale after a layoff is hard. It is company leaders who control the narrative, make people feel heard, and explain the why with enough repetition who are able to achieve success after a layoff.•

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Mintz is founder of Ambition in Motion, a firm that helps companies increase employee engagement and collaboration by implementing corporate mentor programs.