He came into my office, sat down, and looked at his hands. He had just been notified that his position was eliminated and his employment would be terminated. He was stunned; he could not speak. I called for medical…he just wasn’t right.

Her manager said, “She comes in every day determined to find another job with us. People don’t know what to say to her. She can’t accept that she’s getting laid off and is disrupting the workplace”. I had to send her home.

Martin came in tears; it had been two weeks since he was notified. He hadn’t told his wife, he didn’t know how.
I started my career in human resources in a large company that had a history dominating the competition, had started down the path of “right sizing” a few years earlier, and would continue down that path for the next decade. I know something about layoffs, downsizing, right sizing, whatever you want to call it. To the individual being affected, it comes down to the same thing.

As an HR professional you know the business of layoffs; you know it’s not personal. If there’s no work that matches your skills, there’s no work. With experience, you also know that it hurts, even when you see it coming. It’s a humbling experience that often takes a toll on your self-esteem.

As fate had it, one of my first HR assignments was to teach career development workshops. I learned the importance of having balance in your life and later saw the pain and desperation in the eyes of employees who had none. I learned the importance of self-analysis, and planning and that although there are no guarantees, you certainly can influence what happens in your career and that you have to learn to manage it. In an environment of downsizing the only employment security you have are skills and experience that are marketable in and out of the organization.

During a particularly difficult period, when I was managing the downsizing process for multiple organizations, and while the process was being administered on the HR team (my peers and I), my father was dying of cancer. I knew my friends and I were at risk and that I had a job to do, but my father’s illness taught me the most important lesson of all, downsizing is an unpleasant fact, an inconvenience, a hassle, not the end of the world, nor a death sentence. That lesson helped me cope with what was happening in my life at the time and 15 years later when I lost my job because of the need to reduce headcount.

Over the years, I have worked with many employees dealing with the fear and actuality of losing their jobs. I listen and know that they will need to get through the initial pain or shock before they can start to heal and take positive action. I tell them about others who were laid off and came out ok, sometimes even better. In addition, I talk about the lessons I’ve learned. Downsizing sometimes feels like the end of the world, but it is not, and sometimes it provides the push someone needs to make a change to a better and more fulfilling life.