Despite some cheery reports in the media about a recovering job market, I’m not buying it. Blame it on my brutally laid-off-after-16-years-with-the-same company cynicism, but I don’t think this economy is recovering. Not by a long shot.
With that in mind, I still think its imperative for fellow workers (or future 99’ers) to be aware of the signs that changes are a-comin’ in your workplace and those shifts just might put you on the jobless rolls.
First and foremost and the most obvious are changes in upper management. Both times when my former company undertook massive layoffs it was preceded by a change in ownership. (For that matter, my current company is looking for a new CEO. Yikes!)
Whenever a new CEO comes in they want to put their mark on the company and that usually means shaking things up and “restructuring” (read: reductions in products, services and people). Think of it this way: When you buy a new house, even if the house is structurally sound you’d want to make changes, like painting the rooms and upgrading a bathroom. So it is with corporations. Forget about innovation or finding new sources of revenues, cost cutting is the new mantra for CEOs. (Not that they say that outright. It’s usually phrased as “We looking for business efficiencies.” Efficiency, my potential unemployed butt. They’re looking at layoffs.)
Now, how that affects you and your division is hard to say. It can happen suddenly or play out over time. You have no way of knowing since those discussions are held in board rooms (or in my case, at some bar during happy hour), far from your lowly little cubicle.
So what can you do? Of course, you can search for another job, but again I’m not sure that will reap immediate results even in our supposedly recovering employment market.
You can also keep you ears open for any gossip, but that’s assuming someone knows what it is being discussed, what’s going to happen, or if they will divulge such information. Office gossip can be notoriously unreliable…until that is, it turns out to be true. But you won’t know that until the day they actually tell you to pack up your desk and leave the premises.
What other signs are there? Here are some I personally encountered:
Your boss is either nasty to you or stops talking to you completely. Yep, after 16 years, my one boss started treating me like a piece of dirt, nitpicking and criticizing everything I said and did. The head of the division, who had hired me 16 years earlier, stopped talking to me altogether. Was my work any different? Nah.
So why did they do it? You’d think the mere fact of putting someone’s livelihood in jeopardy would be enough. No, they have to heap on gratuitous cruelty.
First, both were trying to justify my termination. You know, put the blame on me rather the company’s poor revenues and the bad business decisions made by them. That way, they didn’t have to feel bad about the scummy thing they were doing to me or other layoffs. I know my work was no different than before; in fact, it was better and I was doing more tasks than ever before. As tough and painful as this situation is, you just have to suck it up like I did and remember it has nothing to do with you as a person or an employee. Try to maintain your dignity and work ethic. It may not save your job, but it will preserve your self-respect at the very least.
Second, and this is a fairly common practice, bosses think if they treat a potential layoff badly enough, that person will leave the job, thus sparring them paying the unemployment benefits and severance package. Obvious, cowardly and pathetic, really.
That only works if the person can find another job quickly, which is difficult even in a good job market. I remember one time a colleague of mine was getting flack from the head of the division. It was obvious the woman (a real bitch) was trying to push my co-worker out the door. I was looking for a job at the same time, so I passed along a job lead to her, which she was hired for. She was able to get out of a bad work situation and avoid a painful termination.
Alas, that’s not always the case. Most of the time, people cannot find another position quick enough and the most viable alternative is simply to wait for the ax to fall, go on unemployment, and then look for another job.
Your boss gives the “no one has job security speech.” Yeah, no kidding, right? When that phrase is uttered, you might as well start packing up your desk. But did you ever notice how the boss who gives that speech miraculously escapes the chopping block and is the one who decides who no longer has job security…or a job?
So, what can we do as workers do when all or some of those situations present themselves? Wait, worry and take home that coffee cup you brought to the office.
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