Five steps to take after layoffs

From 1999 to 2005, Yitang has experienced countless painful revisions. From the earliest all-encompassing portal, to the later full-scale contraction front, to countless transfers and failures. In June 2001, after two large-scale layoffs, the number of employees dropped from 120 to 30, and each branch was dissolved one by one. Most of the old employees have long since left, while the remaining young people are struggling with their youth, and the dreams of the past have long been wiped out. Every change brings adjustments within the company, and frequent adjustments make the company's personnel experience frequent, resulting in a continuous decline in performance and a vicious circle of company business adjustment.

After layoffs, how to quickly and effectively restore team morale is a thorny problem that many managers must face, and it is also a key factor for the company to continue to develop and achieve expected performance goals. If Yitang paid more attention to team building after layoffs earlier, it might not have been "the old man has gone, the new man is not there". Ray Salemi's new book, After Layoffs, provides a clear guide for managers to lead teams to rebuild trust and achieve organizational goals under the dual pressures of performance and employees.

The operation chain of enterprises in the "post-layoff period"

A survey conducted by the American Hudson Institute in 2000 on 32 companies with more than 10,000 employees around the world showed that after years of layoffs, only 34% of global employees are truly loyal to their company, with 31% staying with their current company as they feel there is nowhere to go, and a final 27% planning to leave within two years.

Because corporate layoffs have a huge psychological impact on employees. If after layoffs, managers still adopt the same operation mode as before, it will inevitably deepen the anxiety of employees, which will affect work performance and even generate resistance.

In Salemi's view, companies "post-layoffs" can use this chain of operations to stabilize the military:

Rebuild trust - create an exciting challenge - assign roles and plan - execute The art of - training.

Rebuild trust. Whether the situation of the company improves or deteriorates after layoffs, layoffs will always have a certain impact on the psychology of employees, especially the mutual trust between employees and the company. In a business, trust is the most valuable asset and the easiest to disappear.

Create a challenge that can be exciting. Challenges that can be exciting are especially important after layoffs, even if the task is the same as before, managers need to clearly set goals again and eliminate uncertainty in employees' minds.

Assign roles and develop plans. Companies often cut staff by laying off workers without reducing the amount of work that needs to be done, which is simple economics. Managers must readjust the job functions of team members to meet the needs of organizational development.

The art of execution. After jointly setting the expected goals with the employees, the manager should provide the employees with the required work resources, evaluate the employees' work performance against a detailed and measurable work scale, and then analyze the impact of the work performance on the company on the basis of , reward employees who achieve their job goals or help those who don't.

Training. "It is better to teach a man to fish than to give him a fish." The key to eliminating the "survivor's" sense of crisis is to help them acquire more vocational skills to meet the challenges of tomorrow.

No matter which link in the chain, the biggest challenge for managers is the "heart-to-heart" communication with employees. However, paying attention to the mental health of employees and strengthening communication does not require managers to make unprincipled concessions and compromises. At this time, the art of execution is more important.

Rebuild the mutual trust between the company and its employees with sincerity.

Managers need to work together with employees to create a cooperative leadership model based on assessing the degree of emotional change of team members, work together to get through the emotional recovery period, and complete the healing process that combines redemption of others and self-redemption. Establishing "emotional accounts" is a good way, but it requires long-term investment and management by managers.

The "emotional account" is a very vivid picture of the increase and decrease in the trust between the borrower and the borrower. The more emotional investment, the higher the "deposit balance", the more emotional loss, the less "deposit balance", and even negative values. The balance of deposits fully shows the level of trust between the depositor and the lender. Managers need to operate and invest in "emotional accounts" for a long time, so as to avoid "feelings" when they are used up.

A collaborative leadership model created by managers and team members can greatly increase emotional account savings and enhance trust: managers assign responsibility to the team, let the team make decisions as a whole, and use recognition and natural influence to Instead of the reward and punishment system, make employees responsible for themselves and make independent decisions with a responsible attitude. This model provides better protection for restoring the normal working mentality of employees.

The Art of Execution with Win-Win Agreements

Einstein said, "The important problems we face cannot be solved with the same mindset as we created them". After layoffs, many people who have gone through the above are still searching for job security. At this point, if the carrot-and-stick strategy is only going to hurt them even more, why not try a "win-win deal."

A win-win agreement consists of five parts: the expected goal, which the company wants to accomplish as a result of the agreement, and the employee wants to receive compensation, training, or a psychological placebo from it; resources, the intelligence, money, or equipment that the company can provide the employee with, etc. Support; rules, the rules that employees need to follow to achieve the expected goals; measurement, discuss with employees to formulate standards for measuring whether the expected goals are achieved; influence, if the employees achieve the set goals, what incentives will the company use to reward them, if the employees can’t To achieve the set goals, what help or compensation methods will the company provide to employees.

"After Layoffs", (US) Ray Salemi, published by Machinery Industry Press in January 2006, RMB 22.00.

Ada Zhang, Associate Editor of the CEConline website.