Maintaining staff morale during and after a downsizing is essential to a company’s survival.
During layoffs, employees definitely grieve. They grieve not only the loss of their co-workers, but they also grieve the loss of their job security. They start to feel fearful and uncertain, which contributes to more stress.
And these gloomy feelings can have a negative impact on your workplace, such as decreasing productivity.
After a layoff, oftentimes there’s a little bit of an increase in employees’ workloads. This can also affect your employees’ trust in your management team.
Common Mistakes
The biggest mistake I see employers make during downsizings is not sharing information as openly as possible.
Communication throughout the layoff process and after layoffs are complete is crucial. In fact, I don’t think it’s possible to over-communicate during layoffs and downsizings.
Employers and managers need to communicate the facts as honestly as they can, while still remaining compassionate.
Communication can occur in various forms—one-on-one meetings, group discussions, newsletters. Anything can work as long as it’s clear, honest, open and employees can walk away feeling like the decision to conduct layoffs was made fairly and legitimately.
Employees need to understand that the layoff decision is a decision that is good for the company and for the surviving employees’ futures.
If employees truly feel that a layoff decision was approached rationally and was well-thought out, they’re more likely to accept it.
You also want to acknowledge losing employees. This is very, very important. You need to discuss the emotions your surviving employees are going through and make them feel that you are troubled by laying off their co-workers.
Once the layoffs are complete, managers need to remain visible and accessible to surviving employees. They need to continue to interact with them on a daily basis.
Basically, employers, managers and supervisors need to help maintain the morale of the survivors.
Ideas for Maintaining Your Surviving Employees’ Morale
Here are five examples of different ways companies I’ve worked with have gone about maintaining their surviving employees’ morale:
- One company established a “good news board” where employees and managers could post good news. And not just news related to work, but good personal news, as well as good news about things going on in the local community and outside of the office.
- One company created a “smile team.” The team planned events such as potlucks, but they also participated in helping raise the morale of the organization as a whole.
- Another company started publishing a weekly one-page newsletter that kept the staff informed of the company’s goals and the direction they were headed. (Once again, this goes to prove that communication is important and effective.)
- Another company began to reemphasize the organization’s mission and values. They began talking to survivors about the company’s post-layoff mission and goals. They wanted to take the time to explain to the survivors that the company was still moving forward, even though they lost some people.
- Another company created a rewards and recognition program. This helped morale a lot. Employees appreciated being recognized and rewarded for doing something well. Rewards and recognition reassure employees that they are valued, not only by their manager, but also by the company.
These ideas produced good results for the companies that implemented them.
There are several ways you can re-build your surviving employees’ morale after a layoff. You just need to keep the most important thing in mind: COMMUNICATION!