helping the Layoffs

Getting layoff is a very stressful experience for the staff. It is not affecting his financial position, but it has negative implication to his social and personal confidence. They family will be affecting especially if he is the sole bread winner.

The stress will be affecting the company's management staff as well, though not exactly . It would be very difficult and call your staff for a meeting and deliver them the bad news. This is especially so if you had been working like family for years. The general company's mood will change as the remaining staff will have the fear that similar fate will fall upon them.

However, as the manager of the layoff staff, you can assist to lessen the burden. These are a few options that you may like to consider.

a. Plan it early..

Has a small team to manage the separation and include some representative from the staff groups. Identify the ways to assist the staff. By having the team and the representative, it will give the staff confident that the management cares, not only for the well being of the organisation, but the welfare of the staff.

b. Training

Provide training for certain transferable skills and guides for getting jobs. Subject such as CV writing, interview skills, IT skills can help them land into employment. Managing money will be another area of interest.

c. Network with other companies.

The company will be in better position to establish linkages with other organisations and build up data base on career opportunities available in other companies. The CV of the staff may be sent to other organisation to check for possible careers.

d. Consider the options

The staff may be given option to consider different post with the common skill thread. For example, an engineer is known to have the love for numbers and science and they are able to examine facts based on logical thinking. The same skill are also noted in accountancy, so if the retrenched are engineers, they may like to consider the option of switching career to accountancy.

There had been cases that the staff actually thanks the company for laying them off. The case was of the engineer who was in charge of the company's production machinery for 10 years. As the company changed the production method to outsourcing, the job was made redundant. So the redundant engineer decided to start a small fabrication workshop and became a supplier to a bigger oil and gas company. As the industry grew, so was the company. Ten years later, the small workshop grew to multi million dollar business. " I would have been the engineer looking after the old machines, if the company did not retrench me, ...... thank you for the retrenchment"