One night in 2010, business writer Teresa Murray’s editor finished working on one of her stories. The following morning, he didn’t show up for work.“He never took off sick,” says Murray. “People had a bad vibe. Where was he?”
She soon learned that her editor was gone, laid off, never to return.
“He was so well-liked and respected,” says Murray, a columnist for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, which reduced its newsroom by over 75 percent since 2006. “It is devastating. You are numb on so many levels. I was hurting for me, for him, for the newsroom.”
Losing beloved colleagues and bosses to layoffs has become a fact of life in many industries across the nation.
Experts share these tips on how to cope:
Acknowledge your feelings
You may experience a range of emotions, including stress, sadness, loss and fear.
“It can be heartbreaking,” says Sigal Barsade, Ph.D., the Joseph Frank Bernstein professor of management at the Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania. “You were used to this person, you liked being around them, you needed them, they were helpful from a work perspective.”
Work is often viewed as a place “to shutter our emotions” Barsade says, but “suppression never works; it makes it worse. Acknowledge that it is legitimate to feel sad about the fact they are losing their job. Allow yourself to feel it.”
Focus on the person who lost the job
After a layoff or buyout, it’s common for any person who’s been let go to feel embarrassed and ashamed, even if the job cut had nothing to do with performance.
“It can be a serious emotional crisis,” says David Noer, Ph.D., author of “Healing the Wounds: Overcoming the Trauma of Layoffs and Revitalizing Downsized Organizations” (Jossey-Bass, out now). “This person is being invalidated, doesn’t have a job and is going through the trauma of a layoff.”
Be thoughtful about their emotions and what they are going through. “We know it’s helpful to focus on other people’s emotions in terms of helping our own,” Barsade says.
Be a pillar of support
When close friends, colleagues or mentors suddenly lose their job, reach out to them.
“There are norms against reaching out, but once you do, it is very powerful,” says Noer. “Be a good listener, help them deal with their emotions. Ask them how they feel, use reflective questions, like ‘That must be crummy,. How can I be helpful?’ Or shut the hell up and let them talk. They are going through lots of change.”
Have a goodbye party, lunch or dinner to mark your time together. Don’t lament their departure, but endeavor to make them feel better about leaving.
“They may well appreciate that kind of attention from their peers,” Barsade says.
Stay connected
Murray and her colleagues created a buddy system to stay in touch with their hundreds of departed colleagues.
“We had people saying, ‘If I don’t get laid off, I will be a buddy to someone who did,’ ” she says. “If you were a survivor, you would reach out to someone who was laid off, go to lunch with them once a month and keep them feeling like part of a family.”
One of Murray’s former colleagues disappeared for a few days, causing concern.
“We went to his house. He was severely depressed, so we showered him with love and caring and told him [his layoff] had nothing to do with his worth,” she says. They stressed to him “that he had friends”.
Management expert Kim Scott, founder of Candor, Inc. (RadicalCandor.com) and author of “Radical Candor: Be a Kick Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity” (St Martin’s Press, out now) agrees.
“Sometimes the way to manage the loss is to get together every so often after that person leaves,” she says. “Sometimes it’s just verbalizing what you appreciated about working with the person and expressing a hope that your paths may cross again.”
Scott, who co-founded Juice Software, says that after her company had to lay off workers, an employee hosted monthly drinks for them, to which Scott showed up.
“As the CEO, it was stressful. A lot of those people were mad at me, but I felt it was a good thing to do because we were a very close-knit group. It was a good way to communicate to people who’d been laid off that we respected and cared about them.”
Take stock of your own work life
Once a person leaves, survivors can be left feeling isolated.
“Think of an action plan for yourself,” says Barsade. “From an emotional perspective, it’s important to not fall into a situation where you get lonely or depressed. Nobody will immediately replace this person who left, but look for other people who can satisfy [some of the lost connection].”
Another implication is: How will the work get done with this person gone?
“Do you have the knowledge?” Barsade says. “Make sure you have a plan for that, to make sure you can do the work well.”
And be aware that no one’s job is safe, says Noer. Whether from a layoff, retirement or moving to another job, you will part ways eventually.
“Don’t put all your social and emotional eggs in one basket,” he says. “Connect to people outside the organization. We are all temporary employees. Learn from the experience and become more autonomous.”