- CHICAGO - When the trend toward downsizing began to surface in the 1980s, human resources and communication professionals were quick to make sure that corporate messages were put together for the victims and that as much clean-up work as possible was done to save face. But what about the survivors?
- From 1987 to 1995, more than 15 million Americans were permanently laid off;
- In 1996, 44 percent of large companies reported a net reduction in their workforces; and
- Over 85 percent of Fortune 1000 companies have downsized since 1987.
Many PR professionals having been skittering over this rather important segment, says a senior human resource executive who spoke last week at an International Quality & Productivity Center conference dealing with internal communications in the wake of today's downsizing. And several deep-pocketed companies have bowed to that trend in the past several years: IBM laid off 86,000; General Motors, 74,000; Sears, 50,000; and Procter & Gamble, 18,000, according to Business Week.
"Survivors want to know what measures are being taken (to buttress the organization) and they want to be given a concrete scenario for how the company is going to compete," said Jennie Wong Simpson, with Rockwell International Corp. Simpson, through research that has been funded in part by the Society for Human Resource Management Foundation, is earning her Ph.D. from the University of Southern California, Los Angeles and is overseeing a study about Layoff Survivor Syndrome, a coin she termed to categorize the residual effects of layoffs.
And if Simpson's study - which represents the infant stages of a phenomenon corporate America has yet to address - holds true, communicators are going to be wearing one more hat in the future: that of advocates for the employees who remain after a company is restructured.
Although Simpson presented a cornucopia of grim statistics, the most startling one (that underscores how dire a situation this is) is one that communicators can carry to their CEOs: the American Management Association reports that initially only 30 percent of downsized companies experience increased productivity and only 26 percent experience increased quality - factors Simpson links to decreased employee morale, decreased job performance and increased work-related stress.
However, communicators, who team with human resource professionals, can ease that by putting together messages to address internal concerns and to manage damage control, Simpson added.
In presenting her research, Simpson told communicators that one of the mistakes being made when a company reduces its staff is that messages aren't being tailored. Employees don't want to hear the same messages that are crafted for external constituent audiences, primarily those in the financial community. "What employees want to know is how they are going to cope," Simpson said.
According to Simpson, there are several key signs that speak of how the corporate fabric of America has become colored by these thick threads of layoffs:
At the outset of Simpson's presentation, audience members - many of whom are already charged with lofty corporate tasks such as setting up crisis plans and heading PR via in-house intranets - seemed a little skeptical of just how serious an issue this is. During the course of the discussion, they queried Simpson about the methodology she used; about the companies she tapped for data; and about what tangibles she could provide to support her theory. (Simpson said several factors, including global competitors with lower overhead, high levels of corporate debt and the rise of information technology and the computerization of work, has led to Layoff Survivor Syndrome.)
But by the end of her presentation, execs waited in line to speak with her, many of them wanting to know what they could do internally to provide CEOs with the measurement and proof they need to convey that reaching survivors, not victims, is paramount to a company's profitability. (In PR and communications, providing proof of what's done day in and day out is one of the issues that continues to nip at professionals' ankles.)
Tackling 'Layoff Survivor Syndrome'
- Among the tactics Rockwell human resources professional Jennie Wong Simpson recommends for communicators trying to tackle LSS are these:
- Provide timely and accurate information about the layoffs.
- Make sure that the reason for the layoffs is clearly communicated by both immediate supervisors and senior management;
- Communicate to the "survivors" the special provisions made on behalf of the victims;
- Have managers acknowledge the increased work load for laid-off survivors and communicate plans to address changing roles within the organization; and
- Make sure you convey a consistent and compelling vision for the future.