How do you assess the value of an individual job?
How do you assess the value of an individual employee?
What makes you valuable to the job market?
What makes you valuable to a specific company?
How does value correlate to salary? Or does it?
Continue reading The 3 components of value for an IT/Software Development employee
“I can’t find a job”
“I have a great Job”
“I’ve been let go from my job”
“I hate my job”
“I need a job”
“I was laid off from my job”
“I lost my job”
“I didn’t get the job”
We have all heard these statements and more like them regarding that thing we all love to hate, a job.
A job can provide the income and benefits we all need. A job provides a sense pf pride when we do well. And it provides a sense of identity for what we do. All of the are good things.
And many times we look for security in a job. But, in reality, those who are ‘let go’ understand that there is no security in a job. What feels like a great secure job one minute can quickly be eliminated by corporate changes or economic events.
So why are jobs at their core really no security at all?
Job by definition means “someone else”.
If you have a job someone else is paying you. Someone else is managing you. Someone else is setting the agenda. Someone else is deciding the larger issues of employment. Someone else is taking the risk to provide goods and services to the market place. Someone else is in control.
Someone else.
Not you.
Granted, you can quit. However, if you still need a job, you are in the same boat as before, relying on someone else.
Certainly you benefit as a byproduct of doing a good job through salary, bonuses and other benefits. If you do well you can get promoted to a new job.
However, you are not the purpose of the job. You are the doer of the job. And if you don’t do it, someone else will. We are all replaceable.
A job is an equation that has to be balanced. It goes something like this:
(Real Value you deliver to the company) > X * (Your total cost to the company)
Where rarely X is 1. Many times it is much greater.
If a salesperson simply makes their equivalent salary in sales for the company they won’t be around long.
If that equation fails to balance then you may be invited to attend work elsewhere.
So if you can’t trust a company to provide job security then where does it come from?
Well, it comes from you.
Employment security is derived from your inate abilities, skills and attitudes that are valuable to any employer. Those are the things inside you that will get you another job.
What are they?
Ultimately we are the stewards of our own selves. One of the best job related investments you can make is in yourself.
Invest in your training, self improvement and growth.
As William Earnest Henley said in the classic poem Invictus:
You are the captain of your self and you are responsible to do those things to grow and improve. The world won’t do it for you.
In this, you take steps toward building your own security.
So captain, where are you sailing?
Leadership is a set of highly integrated skills that, in many ways, are better learned in real life on the job than in other types of educational scenarios.
Here are some simple ways to augment your leadership training I have found to be effective in my career. Their only real cost time and attention.
Coaching a team helps you practice preparing, planning, communicating and making decisions in real time.
When my son was younger I coached his youth soccer teams for several years, even though I was not a soccer player in my own athletic pursuits. I had to schedule practice, communicate with parents and players, actually train, evaluate and coach the players to improvement and manage games.
I learned to communicate more simply and cleary and repeatedly – all of which are key skills for any level of leadership.
I learned to train our players in routine and I learned to use fun and competition to encourage effort. These concepts also apply directly to coaching your employees.
I am not a green thumb. Growing plants for me is not easy. I have to be persistent. However, I have noticed that growing plants can instill habits that serve well in leading organizations.
Plants require a certain consistency in checking and care. Plants require observation, diagnosis and corrective action.
When plants are cared for you are rewarded with food or beautiful flowers or greenery.
Plants are a lot like organizations. Organizations need constant care and feeding. They also sometimes need observation, diagnosis and corrective action. I have a row of plants on my office credenza which are constant reminders to me of the care and attention needed for organizational health.
Working with kids are great ways to practice your communication and your ability to think and plan ahead.
Managing a room of small children makes you think ahead and plan. You will become better at anticipation and acting to head off issues and problems.
Teaching kids also forces you to communicate clearly and repeatedly to make your message clear and understood.
Kids also ask very direct and penetrating questions much like employees or customers. You get to practice forming clear, concise answers in a low risk environment.
When you teach kids you also get to deal with those times of kids are acting out or causing problems. Dealing with these situations in real time trains you on to think, act and reason quickly to regain control of the situation.
Watching kids grow and learn and develop is also very rewarding. Much in the same way an organization grows and achieves goals and objectives.
Teaching kids is amazing practice for leading an organization.
The best leadership is lived out by serving your organization. Practice service, meeting the needs of others.
Serving forces focus on another, specifically meeting their needs. It’s so easy to get so self absorbed as to be of little use to the people around us. Service puts the pause button on our self focus and invites us to focus on others for a time.
Service helps build your generosity muscles, giving time, emotion, experience, encouragement or resources for the good and help of others.
And, as you serve, especially if you are working with those less fortunate than you, it builds your own sense of gratitude.
As an organizational leader the qualities of service, focus on others, generosity and gratitude are key to building your people and building their trust in you as a leader.
Have a time of daily reflection where you can quietly, calmly think about the events of the day and your reaction to them.
What went right? What went wrong?
What could I have reacted better to?
How could I have handled that situation better?
Was my work today in line with my character, plan and goals?
What did I learn today that will change what I do tomorrow?
This type of reflection builds a feedback loop for continuous improvement and better planning for tomorrow.
I have found these ways helpful in my leadership development, when I was willing and humble enough to learn the lessons these environments were trying to teach me.
What are your simple ways to improve leadership capability?
“You’re fired.”
“We are letting you go.”
“You are being transitioned.”
“You’re being furloughed.”
“We are laying you off.”
“We’re going in a different direction.”
“We aren’t renewing your contract.”
It doesn’t matter how its said. It always means the same thing.
Your job with that employer is over.
Your paycheck stops. Your benefits are over. Your daily routine changes. You have to leave fellow employees you have become close with. Your future becomes uncertain. Your financial situation may be put in distress. You may feel emotionally traumatized. Your focus is suddenly and violently redirected. And you have to deal with a range of emotions.
And at the end of the day the reason is almost meaningless unless you did something wrong.
When you are let go, here are things you can do to cope and start moving on.
It is easy to become fearful or worse, angry and bitter, when you are terminated. When this happened to me a few years back, I immediately imagined losing our house, not being able to send my kids to college, not being able to buy food etc. You can easily go to a dark place very quickly.
However, those emotions are counter-productive to your progress.
Remind yourself of your talents, characteristics, experience and knowledge that you have gained.
You got the job in the first place. You have proven you can learn and grow. And you can do it again.
Let that boost your confidence as you begin the process to re-group and find a new job.
When bad circumstances happen to us we need to return to our true foundation, our faith in God.
Remind your self with scripture that God has a plan for each of us and a job change, even un-planned, can be a part of a greater process for your development and growth. God can use trying times to deeping your faith and lead you to even better circumstances and personal growth.
Renew your committment to prayer, scripture reading and engaging with your church community. In doing so you will find encouragment and motivation to move ahead.
When this happened to me, my family was unbelievably supportive. We all sat down and talked through what had happened. Even with the kids. I involved them all in the process of reacting to and beginning to move on to something else.
My family helped me process what had happened. They talked to me. They helped me brainstorm ideas. They helped me with new contacts for potential jobs. They encouraged me. They prayed for me.
If you, because of fear, embarrassment or anger, shut off your family from participating in the process you are eliminating a strong source of support and encouragement.
In today’s environment, the importance of your network cannot be overstated. It is most likely that your next job will come, directly or indirectly through your network.
You should always be building your network. And when you are let go from your job, lean on your network. Inform them.
I recommend you send individualized messages to people in your network. Ask them if they know of any opening or any one in their network who may know of any openings.
The day it was announced that I was let go, I notified 61 people in my network individually that night. I received lots of support and numerous leads which I immediately started following up. And that immediate effort got my mind off of the negatives of the situation and it got my transition off to a good start.
Resist making network wide posts. These are easier and may invoke sympathy from your connections but do less for you than individualized direct messages and conversations where you can reconnect with people you know and get advice and leads.
Its easy to spend a lot of time focusing on what happened and why and try to assess blame. It can be cathartic to work through that for a time. However, only thinking back will not prepare you for the future.
Decide to discipline your mind to leave the past behind and to focus on your future. Learn what you need to and laser focus on your activities needed to move you forward.
You now have a new opportunity.
You have a chance for a clean slate, a start over in a new job or even a new career if you so choose. Focus on that. Pour your energy and effort into that. Your new future awaits.
Make sure you monitor what you read and listen to.
Focus on content that helps you move forward.
It is easy, especially during difficult times to succumb to allowing too much negativity to influence and further drag you down.
When I was let go, I watched very little news media. The last thing I needed was to be reminded of how high the unemployment numbers were. Most of the news is negative anyway and it won’t help your frame of mind.
Focus your content consumption on leads, connections, industry information for your area, skill building, motivation and renewal.
Take time to read some of the books on your reading list to grow your knowledge or skill set.
Take some online courses on Udemy, Coursera or LinkedIn Learning to brush up on or gain a new skill.
Find a meet up in your area that has subjects of interest.
All of these types of content will help you, and make you more informed for the next interview you have.
When this happened to me I started tracking my own stats like a baseball player would.
I made a spreadsheet and tracked the number of emails/messages, phone calls, resumes submitted, jobs applied for and recruiters I had engaged with. These numbers became my job search KPI’s. I was tracking the activities that I know would eventually result in me finding a new job.
Having my own personal job search KPI numbers I could update and review each day motivated me to keep going, to keep making the calls and sending the emails etc.
Putting effort into these activities will help you re-focus and transition after the jolt of being let go.
Put all your effort into that. The momentum of this effort will help you deal somewhat with the pain and frustration of the situation.
Look forward and embrace a better future.
Note: Observant readers will notice I actually have seven ways not six. Well, I edited this post after I published it and didn’t want to change the title. So you get one for free. Who doesn’t like a free bonus?
Bad leadership can be highly inspirational. It inspires anger, mutiny, frustration, confusion, abandonment, resentment or just plain old apathy. All of which, negatively affect your business.
Use the 6 Ps below to see if you have any of the highly inspirational traits. And find out alternative mindsets for change.
When leaders patronize their team they are sending an implicit message that they don’t believe the team knows what they are doing. It is a message of superiority on the part of the leader. It’s saying “I’m smarter than all of you”.
Patronizing your team chokes the flow of ideas and communication. No one likes being spoken to in this way. It makes you feel like a child and generates resentment. Do this long enough and folks will stop ‘having your back’. That can expose the leader’s blind spots in public and sometimes embarrassing ways.
Smart leaders will use tone, words and body language that encourages dialog and ideas.
A close relative of the “Patronizer” is the pontificator. A pontificator expresses themselves in such a way as to convey that they are always right. And usually, they do it in an overly long-winded dialog. They may allow conversation and listen to other ideas. But at the end of the discussion they make it clear through their speeches that they are the ones who are correct.
This too, is a habit that limits real communication. It makes people zone out. It encourages your team to go through the motions. It undermines team effectiveness. Why bother fighting for a great idea when you have to be brow beaten with long winded diatribes about why your idea is not as good as the pontificator’s idea? People will give up.
Observant leaders will carefully structure their words. You as the leader may be right. If so, then communicate clearly why. Succinctly list reasons or constraints that eliminate other ideas or courses of action. Invite dialog. Explore counter arguments. You may well be right. Or you way well learn something new.
Leaders with nothing substantive to say often resort to platitudes. These statements are worn out cliche’s that have little or no value in the business context in which they are said. They are said so much they are meaningless.
Phrases such as “It is what it is“, or “You never know what might happen” are worthless. Jeff Haden has more great ones in this article.
Resorting to platitudes during a time when real debate, discussion, and collaboration is needed on hard issues will evaporate the confidence of your team in you as a leader.
Effective leaders don’t waste others time with meaningless phrases that serve only to derail substantive discussions. They speak clearly and concisely directly to issues, allowing their team to fully participate.
So what happens when you don’t get what you want?
Maybe the software release is going to be late. Maybe you didn’t get the contract. Maybe marketing rejected your ideas on the new website. Maybe the CEO rejected your product plan.
Do you react in anger? Do you throw a fit? Do you lash out in rage on unsuspecting subordinates when they had nothing to do with the issue?
If you react like this, you are a petulant leader. Think of a three-year-old not getting the toy they want, falling down kicking and screaming. Yeah, you’re an adult version of that.
Having a public negative reaction undermines confidence in your leadership and will cause employees think twice before bringing bad news to you. The bad leadership behavior clogs up the communication pipeline.
Good leaders understand that things don’t always go your way. They react professionally and use these times as learning opportunities. They focus on what improvements they can make when bad things occur.
The pretender always seems to have done great things…somewhere else. They can regale you with stories of great business prowess from yesteryear. They are always they one who saved the day, rescued the sale, figured out the bug. They always have accomplishments that no one else has heard of. Pretenders spend more time in the neighborhood of make believe than they do making people believe in whatever they are doing.
The pretender knows the jargon but comes up short on execution and results. Excuses yes, accomplishments, not really. Pretenders are impressive at first glance but with any probing, you see quickly how shallow they are. And pretenders are highly skilled at pointing the finger of blame somewhere else. They wear Teflon jackets.
Fred Brooks said it well in The Mythical Man Month:
“In practice, actual (as opposed to formal) authority is acquired from the very momentum of accomplishment”
Pretenders may have titular authority, but true influence comes from results. Eventually, the pretenders have to move over for those who actually get things done.
Authentic leaders inspire more devotion because their words and actions reconcile.
These are the leaders that will choke every last cent out of an organization. No toilet paper is cheap enough. No coffee is too watery tasting. No office supply cabinet is too bare for their tastes. Spending the tiniest amount of money, even on absolute necessities, is like pulling wisdom teeth without anesthesia.
Certainly, keeping a judicious eye on expenses is prudent and desirable. But if getting you to spend any money is harder than prying food from the hands of a starving man you are misguided. If you cling to every cent and are so maniacal about costs that you won’t buy sugar packets for the coffee machine you are missing the bigger picture.
There is a balance between expense control and putting out a few bucks to improve the business or treat the employees from time to time.
Balanced leaders know a little spent here and there can go a long way to adding fun, improving morale and generally making people enjoy the environment more. All of which are shown to improve productivity and engagement. Happy employees are proven to take care of customers far more effectively than their sad sack counterparts.
If any of these behavioral attributes ring true for you, the first step to change is admitting you have a problem. If you have leadership tendencies from this list know you can change your habits. These traits may not in singular cases cause you big problems but they all subtly undermine your leadership and effectiveness if the behavior is engaged in on a regular basis.
If you are an employee and see these attributes consistently in your leader or leadership team then it may be time to polish up that LinkedIn profile.
Maybe this was what Grandma was talking about with the admonishment to “mind your P’s and Q’s”.
In the post-apocalyptic setting of The Walking Dead , zombies are everywhere preying on surviving humans for food. The Wikipedia article describes them as “…mindless shells driven solely by instinct”.
Did you realize that small businesses can become just like those zombies. The following four symptoms could mean that your business is literally the walking D.E.A.D.
Is your strategy missing or abandoned? Is your business is just doing the same thing year after year in spite of market signals and internal metrics telling you that’s not working? Are you neglecting to act on customer feedback? Are you learning about your customers or market as the result of learning from experiments?
If any of these questions sound like the reality of your business then you are directionless.
The market is moving around you, its going in a direction. Your customers are being afforded more options, they are moving in a direction. Unless you have direction you can’t move, learn, adapt or advance as a business. And if you don’t advance you will be left behind, customers will migrate to your competitors.
The normal battles of small business fatigue the fittest among us. However, when the normal skirmishes are punctuated by more catastrophic events such as big sales declines, layoffs, product launch failures and the like, it can leave your team exhausted.
When you repeatedly expend large physical, mental and emotional efforts with no payoff, reward, progress or recovery it decimates your strength, will and energy. Exhaustion amplifies negative momentum, making it that much harder to begin new things or attack old problems.
Exhaustion leads to apathy. You are so tired you just don’t care. Apathetic employees are more likely to make mistakes, miss opportunities and ignore customers. Apathetic leaders will ignore issues, frustrate employees and abdicate their responsibilities.
Apathy invites bad customer experiences, neglected processes and procedures, lower morale and lower revenue and profit.
When customers sense apathy in an organization they will stampede for the exits and be easily seduced by your more caring competitors.
Customer complaints are up 32%, yet you are picking out new chairs for the conference room. Sales for last month were down 18% following a 4 month trends, yet you are insisting on changing the fonts in your brochures. Your biggest account just cancelled, yet you want to attend a seminar on how color affects the mood in the office. Are you more focused on choosing the new pens to hand out at conferences than you are focused on the fact that your marketing signups are down 31% year over year?
These are not contrived examples, they are real. I have seen them.
Distraction will always result in solving the wrong problem, missing the point, and ultimately missing key market or customer signals. Distraction can be deadly for a business.
In The Walking Dead, the objective is to survive by killing the zombies.
However, if your business is D.E.A.D. you don’t need to kill it.
There are ways you can revive a D.E.A.D. small business. Look for those in the next post.
The dependence of small business on IT systems and the people who run them increases continuously. Whether the accounting systems, corporate web site, inventory system, the online shopping cart, marketing automation, email servers, the customer management system, internal database servers, manufacturing automation servers and the like. The list goes on and on. Without those IT systems, business grinds to a halt. And without the people that maintain them, you risk business grinding to a halt if something goes awry. IT systems have loads of risk vectors. Hackers, Malware, viruses, ransomware, hardware and software failures and the like.
However those don’t create the biggest risk a small business owner has with respect to IT.
The biggest IT risk a small business owner faces is being unprepared for the loss of a (or the) key IT person or key software developer.
Examples of the key person(s):
Losing any of these types can be hard on a small business. If your business has several of these people in one person then you are at a HUGE risk if that person walks.
What can you do to mitigate the impact if that key person is gone?
Here are 9 steps that can help when that happens.
Make sure that the existing staff has backups of key system configurations saved in a known location. Firewalls, key routers, switches, IP addresses of networks and servers and other company configuration setup should be saved in a known and agreed to place that the owner knows about and understands how to access. This should be also documented.
It is wise to use a corporate password locker such as 1Password or Lastpass. Key system passwords should be stored here with the master password to the locker available to the owner.
Simple block diagrams should be in a known location that diagram key systems, how they are connected, where they are located etc. This will enable the owner to help locate systems in case an issue arises and will help them direct new personnel or vendors when repairs or service is needed.
A list of all 3rd party vendors that are used by the IT / Development teams should be kept in a known place. Contact information for the account representative, as well as services provided and key contract or agreement details.
The locations of on-site backups of systems should also be documented. Additionally off-site backup locations and / or vendors should be detailed in the 3rd party vendor section.
The owner should know the processes used to get IT and development work done, including how to deploy system updates for key servers, web sites and online apps. If for no other reason than to train the replacement employee.
If your company uses automated monitoring such as Icinga or similar, then the owner or replacement personnel need to be added to the notification list.
A documented set of job descriptions will help in the hiring process after the key person leaves. This will give the owner more detail on what the key person does, and the attributes and skills needed in a replacement employee.
The steps, logins and other necessaries required for making site or system updates to key systems need to accessible and understood so that another employees or the owner could execute them or show them to a contractor in a pinch. You may think this is far fetched but if something happens you want to be able to update content and code if needed.
As part of your on-going training and planning it would also benefit the company to conduct a risk and vulnerability assessment so that key risks are known and can be planned for. Additionally, transitions can be planned for as well with succession planning as part of leadership/career development and key employees being cross trained regularly. Finally, the owner should audit these areas periodically to validate readiness and expose weaknesses.
The above 9 steps won’t eliminate the pain of losing a key employee but they will enable the business to move along and speed the on-boarding process of the replacement. The wise small business owner will do well to track and keep up with these areas.
What are the real fundamentals of success? What are simple, small things everyone can do that will set the stage for larger success? In our technology drenched and dependent lives here are 7 non-technical, simple things that can help pave the way for true success.
If your job requires you to be in the office you should be in the office when you are supposed to. If you are required to be at a remote office, or call on a client or prospect then SHOW UP. If you have an online webinar or conference call, SHOW UP. Be there, on time, prepared and ready. As the old saying goes, “You can’t win if you don’t play”. And you can’t play if you don’t show up.
This also means being mentally engaged with your team, customers and company. Checked out, isolated team members are worth little. They waste everyone’s time and don’t help row the boat. Show up fully engaged and ready to contribute, physically and mentally.
Everyone in the company has work together. Make it a better experience by being nice to others. You need to treat other employees, customers and vendors with courtesy, respect and decency. Treat others with the same courtesy and respect you want from them. It helps communication and improves the working environment and enhances collaboration. Some companies have a “no jerks” rule. Some companies use stronger language to say the same thing. Don’t be a jerk.
Being nice doesn’t mean you won’t have debate and disagreement. It doesn’t mean that issues are not confronted. It means you need to resolve those situations in a civil, calm, mature and professional manner and move along. Anger, frustration, name calling, back stabbing, gossip, outbursts, tantrums, passive aggressive behaviors and the like create more problems to solve, slow down communication and create resentment if they continue over time. Show caring and concern for your team, fellow employees and customers.
Rules are there to protect the individual and the organization. They help maintain order and define interactions, boundaries and expectations.
Image if everyone driving cars in a large metro area suddenly went anarchist with respect to the rules of the road. Can you image the mess? The wrecks, injuries, property damage and time lost? It just wouldn’t work. But with proper rules, traffic flows (usually) and people get to and from their destinations safely.
Every business needs rules. I know, sometimes the dress code or attendance policies may not be what you would design. If you want to be a rebellious cowboy, go work on a ranch. If there are serious problems with rules talk to your leader. Otherwise man (or woman) up and respect the rules. It will make the entire workplace flow better.
We are all professionals. We get paid to do a job. Do your job like a professional. Don’t leave problems for others to clean up later. Don’t do your job half way. Don’t finish late. Don’t deliver half the results. Your work products should demonstrate competence, excellence, and be professional in quality and implementation. This includes your personal and professional growth and continued learning. Ultimately only you can control that.
No one can read your mind. What you don’t say or communicate, your other teammates and employees can’t know. Talk. Write. Inform. Repeat. Ask clarifying questions. Over communicate. Effective organizations communicate well, clearly and continuously. When you have clear, consistent communication the team can move faster and provide better results.
Serve the customer as if your business depends on it, because it does. Customers fund the operation of the business. Customers pay your salary. Customers can help you sell and market. It doesn’t matter if they are Internal or external customers, you are there for them, and not the other way around. Always remember that. Customers can quickly tell if they are really cared for and are being served properly. They will move to businesses that show genuine care for them in a heartbeat.
Always carry your share of the load. Slackers can move along. You should always promote an “I have your back” culture. Support your team with your help, assistance, learning, sharing and collaboration. Be a consistent example re-inforcing the behavior you want your team to replicate.
These are 7 simple actions that, if you implement as habits, will yield results and build the foundations for your success.
If your company has had a layoff, you know that can be a real drain on morale and motivation for those still working at the company. Layoffs result in questioning the viability of the company and diminish hope for the future for those still at the firm. Layoffs alter the workload, add uncertainty, cause upheaval in working arrangements and can contribute to lessened commitment. In my previous post, I wrote about what leaders can do to help a company move on after a layoff.
But what about those that are still at the business after a layoff? What can you do?
Here are 7 ways for you to move on.
Usually many things conspire to create a situation where layoffs are necessary. There is typically no single thing or person to blame. It’s usually a combination of decisions, circumstances and market forces that combine to force the issue. So don’t waste a lot of time worrying about things in the past you can’t control. It happened. It’s over. Now the real issue is what you will do.
Layoffs most likely result from difficult business situations. These may situations not be rectified quickly. There may be additional pain before the business or market improves.
Remember the Stockade paradox and be willing to face the reality of where the company is but also express your faith that the company will prevail. Part of facing the reality is figuring out what needs to be done to stabilize, recover, grow and improve. Knowing the true reality but choosing to approach the task ahead with a positive mindset can help your attitude and commitment and improve your work atmosphere.
After a layoff has occurred at your firm, it is a time to reflect on where you are in your engagement with the company and how that aligns with your larger career plans.
Assess the layoff in terms of your plans and goals. If the company is slowly shutting down the function you do then you need to plan appropriately. If you still see growth and upward advancement opportunity in future products and plans then it may be worth it to stay put and forge ahead. A layoff can narrow our focus to the company and our direct ability to get a pay check. However, a more thoughtful assessment of your overall career goals and how the current company helps you meet those is advisable.
Examine what caused the action to be necessary. Evaluate what your leaders say about the causes, mitigations and the future plans and strategies.
Ask key questions about the situation. What can you learn about the market or your product from what happened? What can you learn about your company from what happened? What can you learn from your skill set or your position or career from what happened? What can you learn about future potential and direction of the company and your function?
Learn all you can about the situation. Talk to your leaders and listen carefully to what they say. That helps you make more informed decisions in the future. Although painful, the situations surrounding a layoff should be viewed as a learning event for the whole company. Learn, and act to avoid the situation in the future.
Your true security does not come from a job or a company or a title or a boss or leader. All of those will let you down at some point, guaranteed.
Your job security is in YOU!! It is in your own talents and abilities. Your true job security comes from using your capabilities to learn, adapt, grow, solve problems, create solutions and bring value to a company or business. If you concentrate on that, and are always learning and investing in your development, you will rarely be in need of a job because you will always have one.
Every layoff also brings opportunities for employees to step up, take on new roles and responsibilities and handle new job functions. Watch for opportunities that present themselves and be ready to step up if the opening aligns with your goals and objectives. Taking a new opportunity can be a time to stretch yourself, learn new capabilities and enhance your experience base.
It is good to remember those things you actually have direct control of. Focus on those. Your job, your tasks, your effort, your attitude, your responsibilities, your behavior, your quality. Redouble your efforts to do your responsibilities with excellence. Worrying about what you can’t control just wastes time, makes you angry and increases the feeling of helplessness about the situation. Resist the temptation to mope around and discuss what you can’t control with other mopers.
The best antidote to the malaise of the after-layoff time, is to focus on actions you can do and get busy. By doing this you help maximize your chances of success. To have hope for your future you have to amp it up. If your company has been losing the battle but you don’t amp up the fight you have no hope for victory. And if you do this, you will help influence others to do it as well.
As an employees left at the company after a layoff you face a choice with three options:
From my experience there are really only the first 2. At least those are the proactive choices.
If you decide that the circumstances warrant you to continue with the business then be all in. Re-commit to do as much as you can to move the business forward. Be an agent of change and improvement and influence others to do the same.
If you decide that you can’t continue there then don’t hang around and further stink up the place. Update your resume, find another job and move on. If you stay with a bad attitude, you will just pollute the rest of the folks with your bad karma, and slow down the whole recovery process for everyone.
Any way you slice it layoffs are tough.If you are an employee still at a firm after a layoff, apply these 7 principles and it can help you get back to moving the business forward sooner.
Layoffs are incredibly difficult on companies and the employees left behind. They sap corporate momentum and drain employee morale. They result in questioning the viability of the company and diminish hope for the future.
Layoffs usually happen in difficult business situations. Letting go of good people simply adds insult to injury during an already tough time. It is hard to say goodbye to friends and valued colleagues, especially when it was no fault of their own. Layoffs alter the workload, add uncertainty, cause upheaval in working arrangements and can contribute to lessened commitment.
So what can a company leader do to regroup and move on? Here are 9 things a leader can do to help regroup after a layoff.
Compounding the pain of layoffs are the feelings of uncertainty, isolation and being alone. Silence from leadership now is deafening. As an employee, when you are isolated and alone you tend to worry more and make the situation worse, losing objectivity. And, in the absence of clear, proactive communications from leadership, employees will invent the reality that fits what they can see and feel. Leadership silence and isolation fuels the rumor mill.
It is important to counteract these feelings in the remaining employees. It is important to communicate openly and clearly to keep the morale situation from getting worse.
Get them together. Have a state of the company lunch or a morning coffee together. Getting together and sharing food or drink can help sooth raw emotion, provide a venue for dialog, re-establish shared connections and begin the process of moving on.
Losing good friends and valued employees is sad and emotionally tough. As an owner or manager, acknowledge the pain. Its tough on everyone. The loss, the uncertainty, the anger and frustration, and the reality of more work for everyone left all make for a raw situation. Unless you are a leader with no feelings it is tough for you too. Let the employees know that. Oh and you can’t be a phony. Employees can see insincerity in a leader a mile away and it stinks, especially during a tough time like post layoffs. Not much can cause employees to write you off as a leader faster than insincerity during such a time.
Don’t hide. Don’t be a emotional robot. Don’t read a prepared statement. Don’t pass the buck to some HR person. Don’t joke around and don’t ignore the issue. Stand up and be a leader. Your employees work for you. They need to see you as a real person connected to them in a real way. They need to see you working through this with them. Speak from your heart. By being real you can gain trust and begin to restore credibility with those employees who may internally blame you directly.
According to Dan Pink in his book Drive, appreciation, acknowledgement of contribution and purpose are important motivators, in some situations more important than compensation. Thanks, acknowledgement and appreciation is like a spoonful of sugar that helps the medicine go down. Express genuine thanks for the efforts of the group. Appreciate them individually, publicly and sincerely. Acknowledge the hard work and sacrifice that has occurred and how important that will be to move forward.
As the owner or manager you should be able to explain, in straight forward language, why this action was necessary. Avoid jargon, and veiled terms. No buzzword bingo here. Use simple language like “sales were off 2x our projections” or “we lost the Jetson contract” (or whatever is appropriate for your situation). This will help employees understand the bigger picture they may not be fully aware of. Discuss the other actions that leadership took to help mitigate the necessity of layoffs. Unless you just like whacking folks, there should a decent list of other actions the company did to try to prevent having to lay off employees.
A layoff is tough but can be more bearable when there is reason for hope. Explain the reasons the employees should hope in the company. Don’t rely on generic platitudes like “We have a good pipeline” or “the fourth quarter always picks up”. Give the specifics of the strategy to improve revenue, profit or expenses. Discuss upcoming product plans, launches, campaigns, key contracts or joint ventures. If you can’t spell out a reason for hope with the plans you have (or you don’t have any plans at all), then this will surely be a direct invitation for your employees to update their linked in profile. Their attitude will be “why stay if there is no hope?” You must show tangible reason for hope.
Don’t promise the moon or paint unrealistic possibilities for the future to manipulate emotions. That will come back to bite you. Employees have good memories. Be positive but acknowledge the work needed. Remember the Stockade paradox, be realistic, facing the brutal facts, but also express your faith that the company will prevail. You also have to believe your message. If you come across as shaky, doubtful, uncertain or absurdly optimistic you will send the rest of the folks running for the exits.
While the group meetings are good, many employees may want to have individual conversations with the owner or manager. Support that. Sit down and take the time to look people in the eye, answer questions, explain, reassure where you can and connect. This will pay dividends in re-committment and hope if you do it in an honest and authentic way.
Direct action is one of the best antidotes to fear. So make sure that the whole company is involved in the implementation phase of recovery. Discuss the strategy for improvement. Review the tactics. Make sure everyone is clear and working toward moving the boat forward. They need to see the leadership doing the same thing. This is the time to roll up your sleeves and push forward as a team. If the employees see you energetically working toward the new objectives they will get on board.
The actions, attitudes and interactions of the leader will make or break the turn-around effort of the company after a layoff. As a leader you set the tone. Employees will key off of your attitude and demeanor. They will make renewed commitments (or not) based on what they see and hear from you. So be authentic. Use this time as a rallying point for the future. These 9 ways can help move the process forward. If you do these things as a leader you have the potential to get everyone on board to go solve the real issues that still need to be dealt with in the business. Without this, well, you may get to do it all over again.
