10 Ways to Keep Surviving Employees Motivated After Layoffs

Unfortunately, 2009 may go down in history as a year of record mass layoffs. No doubt, these are trying times for both employers and employees. And employers can find that employees who survive layoff events will start to show signs of feeling less motivated and engaged. This situation, of course, usually results in lower productivity levels.

So employee engagement becomes even more important these days. Studies are starting to pop-up as identifying some organizations with alarmingly low employee-engagement numbers. For instance, one polling report indicated that nearly three-fourths of workers today are "disengaged" from their work.

Fortunately, in spite of these trying times, employers do have the power to take positive actions, which can help keep surviving employees perpetually motivated and engaged in their work.

Generally, here’s what you will want to remember:

• Let employees know that they are valued consistently and regularly.
• Communicate with employees on an ongoing basis.
• Keep employees informed about the meaning of the organization, especially if there have been restructuring events or redefined purposes for the business.
• Provide employees with regular and ongoing feedback.
• Implement or continue employee development initiatives and programs.

Now, here are 10 specific and little-to-no-cost ways that employers can accomplish the above-listed goals:

1. Develop or increase communications such as through an employee newsletter.
2. Consider writing ongoing e-articles about various initiatives taking place since the layoffs.
3. Install a telephone ‘hotline’ so that employees can call in and hear updated messages.
4. Schedule ongoing meetings that can be organized in a variety of ways. For example, you can hold departmental style or small group meetings. You can also organize focus groups with various departments and you can solicit employee feedback. Employee focus groups can also be excellent sources for generating ideas about cost-saving measures or process improvements.
5. Praise employees in a public fashion so that team members know what type of valued work performance is expected and rewarded.
6. Continue with training and development in creative and resourceful ways. You may want to bookmark and read this HRTools Insight for cost-effective ideas and trends. Or, some organizations take advantage of this cost-effective training alternative—send only one employee to a training event and then assign this individual to return and educate others within the organization.
7. Go out of your way to treat the surviving employees (those remaining after the layoff event) almost as though they are new employees. By contrast, you want to avoid sending the message that they should feel lucky to even be employed.
8. Allow surviving employees the time to grieve, as described in this HRTools.com article by Dr. Cara Whedbee. Some surviving employees may have worked with their laid-off co-workers for years, and now they go to work seeing empty chairs/desks or emptier shop floors as regular reminders that they are gone. So these surviving employees are faced with a sense of loss.
9. Remind employees of the employee assistance program (EAP) if the organization has this benefit program. Managers should avoid putting themselves in counseling roles, but an EAP is often an employee benefit that provides confidential and professional counseling services.
10. Prepare to be an active listener. Managers should practice the art and technique of active listening. It’s important to empathize with employees because they are going through a great deal of stress. Not only have they lost valued co-worker relationships, but oftentimes, they are expected to do more with less.

As mentioned, the costs to take these steps are none to minimal. And the return on investment is significant, because a business will rise above the competition with motivated employees. When a business acts swiftly to re-engage its surviving employees, it does a great service to everyone involved—including customers, stakeholders, management and employees.

So let employees know how much you value them and their contributions. Communicate where you plan on taking the company and how they can help. By taking positive action steps and letting employees know you care, studies show that employee engagement will correspondingly rise to the levels businesses need to succeed.

Employers should act swiftly after a layoff event to re-engage employees.