If you were to ask managers around the world what part of their jobs they disliked the most, there’s a good chance you’d find laying off employees at the top of the list. Layoffs may be critical to a company’s survival and future success, but they are among the most challenging tasks for management.

What, then, should employers do when faced with the prospect of letting people go?

How to lay off an employee with dignity

Great workplaces find ways to maintain trust, even when tough economic times call for layoffs. 카지노 커뮤니티 랭킹 research has shown that companies who build trust during difficult times experience faster recovery to their business and to their brand.

How layoffs differ from furloughs

A layoff is permanent and initiated by big changes, such as the need to cut costs, downsize, and restructure an organization. A furlough is a temporary layoff — affected employees are still legally employed by their company, but can neither work nor earn money. In both cases, the employee is not considered at fault.

We looked at Great Place To Work® data from the Great Recession to see how leading organizations navigated those tumultuous days. 카지노 커뮤니티 랭킹 historical research and culture consulting with leaders at Best Workplaces℧ navigating through crises found a number of common practices:

1. Promote a culture of listening

When leaders and managers focus their time listening to their people, they are better equipped to have tough conversations when layoffs are necessary.

When you really know your employees as people, rather than merely workers, you know what they value and what style of communication resonates best. You can have the conversation knowing how to best respond to their needs.

For example:

• Longtime employees might need reassurance that the layoff wasn’t due to poor performance
• Caregivers might be more focused on what the sudden drop in pay means for their family

Everyone reacts differently during stressful situations, but knowing who they are and what is important to them can help you be more sensitive and focused, making a difficult conversation more compassionate.

2. Support your managers

For many leaders, the need to lay off an employee is the most difficult part of their position and counts among their most unpleasant tasks.

Support your leaders by providing the tools and resources needed to deliver difficult news so that they feel more prepared for these conversations.

Some ways you can offer support :

• Meet with senior managers to acknowledge their challenges, unpleasant tasks ahead, and the importance of their role, as well as to describe your organization’s comprehensive approach for supporting employees — linking it to company values
• Call on experts in grief or resiliency training
• Create a forum (whether an online chat channel or recurring meeting) for leaders and HR to talk about employee reactions and how to answer difficult questions that come up

3. Communicate transparently and often

Open and honest communication will help employees understand how the crisis is affecting the company. This can create a greater understanding of the difficult decisions and the negative impact that follows.

While you don’t want to elicit fear or panic, employees do want to understand how their employer is faring in these tough economic times. People will be more resilient if they understand how outside forces are impacting their job, their profession, their industry, and their company.

When layoff details are announced, leverage all levels of leadership in the discussion, with the goal of consistent, clear, and effective two-way communication. For example, the CEO can host a town hall for the entire company. Then, general managers can host smaller sessions with business units, and an individual manager can lead a session for their own department.

Many leaders at great workplaces send regular videos recorded from their smartphones. These messages are imperfect but vital to sharing information timely and sincerely. Employees value this authenticity.

This sends a much stronger and more compassionate message of care, openness, and authenticity — things we all need and hold onto in times of insecurity.

4. Offer internal or external support to help affected employees

How an employer handles the layoff process and the following transition tells a lasting story of an organization’s culture. For this reason, we recommend going above and beyond what is expected. Extend extra care to employees during this challenging time.

The best companies provide resources, including:

• Time for employees to process, gather their belongings, and say goodbyes
• A severance package and extended health benefits
• Transition counseling, outplacement services, employee assistance, COBRA coverage, and resume preparation
• Assistance with programs and services such as unemployment benefits and new job retraining
• Introductions to, or job listings from, other local employers who may be hiring
• Written and verbal references to enhance employees’ job-seeking efforts

5. Follow up with laid-off employees

An employee’s relationship with a company shouldn’t end when they are laid off.

Your HR team can reach out to employees following their departure to:

• Check-in on their well-being as a whole person, not just a worker
• Provide tips or updates on any job connections made with other employers
• Remind them of resources that continue to be available, such as unemployment insurance
• Ensure they know that they can be rehired at a later date to replace attrition or for a new position

6. Engage and support your remaining employees

Following a layoff, remaining employees often feel “survivor’s guilt.” After all, the employees who left were their colleagues and friends. Left unaddressed, such feelings of guilt can sap morale and hang over your company culture, endangering its reputation and future.

Here are a few examples of ways you can combat this:

• Engage with remaining staff often to explain how the organization is helping those laid off and share whenever placements for new employment (internal or external) are successful so they can see the extension of care and respect
• Create space in meetings for employees to talk about how they are coping with the bad news
• Increase support to ensure employees have the resources they need, since remaining employees may be putting in long hours and picking up extra work
• Remind them about resources, such as the EAP and employee resource groups, so they can share and process their experiences
• Consider extra measures, such as the HR team repurposing their time to make personal calls to every employee to see how they are doing and what they need for support.

We’re here to support you through workforce changes

Large-scale layoffs can leave remaining employees nervous and anxious about their increased workload and overall job security. Through detailed surveys and data analysis, Great Place To Work 카지노커뮤니티℧ can pinpoint exactly how your employees are feeling — right now. This helps you target your valuable dollars to preserve and improve the company culture you’re known for. Get started with your 카지노커뮤니티 to reveal exactly where you need to allocate resources to make the biggest impact.

But these two seemingly opposing sides go more hand-in-hand than you may think.

That’s because low employee morale and motivation (which fall during times of uncertainty) contributes to poor business performance. Employees who are anxious, uninspired or unengaged won’t put forward their best work. Even if they are not laid off, they are at increased risk of leaving on their own.

What does it mean to recession-proof your company?

There are two sides to recession-proofing your company. One that most employers are probably familiar with and one that’s too-rarely considered: 

• Recession-proofing your business is making your organization economically resistant through actions traditionally thought to shield business during recessions: reducing expenses, scaling back ambitions, and monitoring cash flow to weather the coming storm.
• Recession-proofing your workforce refers to maintaining employee morale, motivation and inspiration during economic downturn.

While most companies focus on their bottom line to survive a recession, research on how to help your business survive a recession by Great Place To Work® has shown that focusing on employee engagement – particularly diversity and inclusion – helps companies thrive during a recession. In fact, our data shows that companies that value diversity and inclusion outperform other companies by as much as 400%.

카지노 커뮤니티 추천 that value diversity and inclusion outperform other companies by as much as 400%.

How diversity and inclusion can help during a recession

Until now, “diversity in the workplace” and “recession” were not likely uttered in the same breath. What possible tie could DEIB have to an economic decline?

A lot.

We discovered this link between DEIB and success during a downturn in a study of the U.S.’s last recession: the Great Recession of 2007–2009. 카지노 커뮤니티 랭킹 data set comprised nearly 4 million employees across a multitude of demographics.

What we found might surprise you: Diversity and inclusion efforts represent a potent source of strength for organizations as they weather tough times.

In particular, the experience of certain groups of employees – including historically disadvantaged groups – predicts whether organizations flatline, survive or thrive during a recession. (“Thrive” describes publicly held companies in our data set that achieved returns of 14% or greater between 2007 and 2009.)

Often-marginalized employees turn out to be predictors of when the business climate will turn bad. Studying their workplace experiences can yield insights about opportunities for changing your company culture and practices to better recession-proof your business.

The key groups of employees whose good experience at work is linked to recession-proofing include:

•    Women
•    People of color
•    Frontline workers
•    Male hourly workers
•    Long-tenured employees. 

Why do these groups serve as leading indicators for organization health?

Just as recessions don’t impact all companies equally, they don’t impact all employees in a given company equally.

Historically, marginalized groups are often the first people to feel the effects of a business running into trouble, such as wage cuts or rounds of layoffs.

These critical populations play vital roles in both good times and bad. They often serve customers directly and are plugged into the reality of how the business is doing. They’re also a source of good ideas that many companies overlook, like ideas for cutting costs or new ways to generate revenue.

How much of a difference can DEIB make during a recession?

During the Great Recession, the S&P 500 suffered a 35.5% decline in stock performance. That’s a lot of companies who lost a lot of value – but they didn’t all share evenly in the pain.

카지노 커뮤니티 추천 whose key employee groups had very positive experiences posted a remarkable 14.4% gain.

Take a moment to let that sink in: in a recession, these companies grew.

For that group of “Thriving” companies, the good news wasn’t limited to the recession. Their gains started before the downturn and continued well past it, as competitors lagged.

From January 3, 2006, to February 1, 2014, the Thriving group saw their stock performance increase 35%, while the S&P 500 had just a 9% gain. These companies didn’t merely outperform the typical business – they blew it out of the water, yielding a relative gain of 400% compared to the S&P 500.

These companies didn’t merely outperform the typical business – they blew it out of the water

Are you worried about a recession? Do these 5 things now

1. Treat everyone as a full member

When employees feel valued, you build trust and increase engagement. As an employer during a recession, it’s critical that you recognize the extraordinary work your team is doing during the crisis and listen to their needs.

What listening tools do you currently have in place to measure employee experience? Identify existing but underused feedback channels. Examples might include:

• employee surveys
• town hall meetings
• company intranet
• chat tools
• feedback forms

To recession-proof your business, review all input and survey feedback from your key groups: male hourly workers, women, frontline workers, people of color, and long-tenured employees. Where experience isn’t the same across groups, leadership needs to take action to address those gaps immediately.

2. Support innovation by all

A company’s ability to innovate, adapt and pivot is critical for it to survive a recession. And yet, too often, businesses get stuck. That could be because they try to stay safe with what they know has worked in the past, or because they’ve failed to build a team that fosters innovation.

has found that an organization’s innovation capacity isn’t determined by how big their R&D department is, or by how quick-thinking their C-suite is in a crisis. But rather, by how many employees consistently experience meaningful opportunities to innovate, with leaders who actively seek employees’ ideas.

The result? More high-quality ideas, greater implementation speed, agility and 5.5 times the revenue growth of peers with a less inclusive approach to innovation.

3. Keep your promises

Everyone is dealing with a lot of uncertainty right now. Not only are we still unsure about the lingering impact of COVID-19 on our daily lives, but we’re also facing knock-on supply chain issues, record-high inflation, attacks on women’s and LGBTQ+ rights, and now, rumours of a recession.

All of this breeds uncertainty, which creates an immense amount of stress. That’s why, when times get tough, delivering on promises is more important than ever. Employees want a predictable and steady leader who they’re willing to follow into the trenches.

We even found this during the early days of the pandemic. Employers who were open, honest, and authentic – even when the news wasn’t positive – sparked employee loyalty, which led to higher business returns during a time when many companies were folding.

Open, honest, and authentic employers — even when the news wasn’t positive — sparked employee loyalty and higher business returns.

Don’t fear-monger, but also don’t sugar-coat or deflect – because your employees are already well aware of what’s going on. Level with them and they’ll appreciate it, and you.

4. Revisit your hiring, firing, and promotion practices

During downturns, most companies follow the last-in, first-out approach. They lay off recent hires, which usually erases progress made towards a more diverse employee population. They may also quickly promote to fill gaps in a way that is unfair to other employees.

What’s more, organizations often overlook how frontline workers and historically disadvantaged groups are faring. Leadership fails to solicit ideas from these workers. 카지노 커뮤니티 추천 miss out on opportunities to thrive by paying too little attention to these key employees.

5. When possible, involve employees in restructuring decisions

During a recession, teams are often in flux. While that can mean saying goodbye to some employees, it can also mean welcoming new staff and moving existing employees onto other teams. All of this can impact employees’ psychological safety.

Ideally, have employees join new teams voluntarily. Give them a say in the decision-making process as to where they’re going or how they think teams should be structured.

Of course, this might not always be possible. There are times, especially during a downturn, when staffing changes will need to be made quickly. If this is the case, it’s even more critical for line managers to welcome new team members and understand employees’ frustrations.

Don’t panic. Prepare your workforce for a recession.

As the next recession approaches, smart companies seek out ways to prepare themselves. By listening to your employees, being transparent with them and making diversity and inclusion a key component of your recession plan, you can position your company to grow, even as your rivals are shrinking.

Are you worried about preparing your company for a recession? Survey your employees during a crisis to understand how to support them and what to do next.

After one of the hottest job markets in generations, the

Rampant inflation, which in turn has seen the Federal Reserve raise interest rates, has many forecasting an economic recession. Tech companies have been some of the most visible orgainzations to tighten their belts, with companies like , , and shedding jobs last year. Now the cuts are hitting other tech giants, including ,  and .

Even the best workplaces aren’t immune to these economic headwinds. Employees are losing trust in their workplaces.

“The best workplaces go through layoffs; it's part of business,” says Marcus Erb, vice president of data science and innovation at Great Place To Work®. “Nobody likes to have it happen, but it has to happen sometimes.”

Who gets cut has profound ramifications for efforts to diversify the American workplace. When Netflix laid off staff, that many of those let go had been working on diversity, equity and inclusion across the company. 

How companies conduct layoffs speaks volumes about how great employers distinguish themselves from merely average ones. A great workplace finds ways to care for employees even as they transition out of the organization. And companies that are serious about diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging take identity into consideration when pondering staff cuts.

A moment to prove your culture

Restructuring is a tipping point for company culture. Whether it’s a merger, acquisition, divestiture or workforce reduction, how a company handles change will impact its culture for years to come.

Researchers from Harvard and Wharton reviewed data from Great Place To Work, revealing that restructuring often widens the gap in the workplace experience for marginalized employee groups:

The gap for women and minority employees grew by 45% when a company underwent a merger, acquisition, divestiture or layoff.

Conversely, companies that supported five key employee groups (women, front-line workers, hourly male workers, long-tenured employees, employees of color) not only outperformed the competition, but saw stock market gains even as the overall economy sank. In a recession, these companies that care for their employees saw their financial performance improve.

“When you have these major economic downturns as a company, everybody's got to pitch in and do their best, adapt and be resilient,” Erb says. “And if [employees] don't trust you, they're not going to do that.”

How great workplaces handle layoffs

The data reveals strategies used by the best work cultures to mitigate the impact of layoffs on employees and employee experience. The overall approach can be separated into three separate phases: before, during and after.

1. Before a layoff

Leaders must double down on communication and clarity, says Tony Bond, chief diversity and innovation officer with Great Place To Work. Workers must be left with no doubt that layoffs were a last resort.

“If it doesn't feel that way, if you haven't cut costs in other areas (travel, expensive meetings) and you lay off people, then the optics on that aren’t great,” Bond says.

When Hilton, a recurring member on the Fortune 100 Best 카지노 커뮤니티 추천 to Work For℧ list, had to lay off employees in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, its leaders didn’t mince words.

“Never in Hilton’s 101-year history has our industry faced a global crisis that brings travel to a virtual standstill,” President and CEO Chris Nasetta told employees.

And employees need to keep hearing from leaders throughout the process.

“It's clarity around communications, it's the quality of the communications, and it's also the frequency of the communications,” Bond says.

This is also the time to ask employees for input. Sourcing ideas from across the organization on cutting costs can help employees feel like they have some control over the situation. However, only in companies that have embraced a For All℧ culture, where everyone is empowered to innovate, will such efforts be possible.

An emotionally intelligent appeal to workers stands in contrast to companies that have tried to bully workers into resigning of their own free will. Turning up the pressure or asking workers to isn’t the same as asking your team to help find cost-cutting measures to save jobs.

2. During a layoff

Great workplaces go the extra mile to personalize messaging, extend benefits to affected employees and even help them find new opportunities. Hilton worked with partners during the COVID-19 crisis to find landing places for thousands of displaced employees at organizations like Amazon, CVS and Walgreens.

Showing care also means thinking about how a layoff might disproportionately hit underrepresented groups.

“You really have to look at the landscape of who is being impacted,” Bond says. That means doing careful analysis and resisting the urge to limit the discussion around downsizing to a handful of leaders.

“Typically what happens in a downturn is that leaders get together and huddle separate from everyone else, try to figure things out and then come to people and articulate what's going to happen,” Bond says. The C-suite might want to restrict information around a decision to cut jobs, but Bond argues that the best companies do the opposite.

“They broaden their focus,” he says. “They talk to more people. They've engaged their people around decisions to be made. That process alone helps them really see it through the lens of belonging or diversity, equity and inclusion.”

When organizations get this wrong, the results can make headlines. When Better.com cut ties with hundreds of employees over Zoom, the callousness of the act .

카지노 커뮤니티 추천 that show care work to extend benefits to affected workers or even keep communication channels open so that team members can be rehired if the market improves.

3. After a layoff

The best workplaces make sure to engage remaining workers who are perhaps grieving their departed colleagues as well as taking on more work due to staff reductions. Failing to meet the moment with empathy will destroy trust.

“Even if you lay people off, you're still going to have people working for you—and they're paying attention to how you handled the layoff,” Erb says.

Giving employees an opportunity to express themselves isn’t expensive or complicated. It just requires leaders willing to provide space.

“Break people out into smaller groups and give them a few questions,” recommends Bond. “Just explore: ‘How are you experiencing things today?’ It's really as simple as that.”

Another important step is to connect remaining employees back to your company’s purpose. When trust is fractured because a friend is laid off, employees are looking for something that will let them feel good about continuing to work for the organization, Bond says.

“That's a time for organizations to really highlight the purpose and the mission and make sure people are rallied around the purpose.”

Leaders should be prepared for some strong emotions.

“It's almost like a death in the family, and you need to process it with the people that are close to you,” Bond says.

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But avoiding the subject altogether can undermine employee trust, inclusion and belonging at work. And these experiences are crucial for things like employee well-being, innovation and productivity.

Courageous conversations in the workplace are about broaching complex and sensitive subjects like race and privilege with your team, boss or HR manager.

They are the sort of conversations that can stir strong emotions, which might feel out of place for work, and they require careful and mindful discussion.

Why is it important to have courageous conversations in the workplace?

“Courageous conversations in the workplace are part of developing a learning culture,” explains Tony Bond, EVP chief diversity & innovation officer, Great Place To Work^®.

“These conversations lead to a better understanding of the needs of others, such as Black employees. They enable leaders and employees, both Black and non-Black to become more comfortable having dialogue around race.”

Worrying about adding salt to wounds or saying the wrong thing are reasonable concerns. Still, they are fears you need to take on if you, your team, and your company want to move forward in the middle of a crisis (such as that teeny global pandemic that is still going on.) 

So, here’s what to do: talk about it. Together. Now.

And guess what? It will help. A lot.

I know it will because we had this discussion twice since the murder of George Floyd, once with our management team and then with the entire company. The benefits reported by employees were huge. 

Folks shared their feelings of relief and said talking to their peers helped them feel less alone. One man learned that even people who look different from him shared the same fears. 

Another woman said her family discussions were so charged, it was a relief to get to share her feelings calmly. Many parents talked about the hopes and fears they have for their children and the tough dinner table discussions they’d been having.

Opening up the conversation validated people’s feelings, gave them a new and psychologically safe outlet and helped everyone feel cared for.

So, here’s a quick guide for setting up what might feel like a difficult discussion. It works best if the whole company participates, but even talking at the team level can help.

How to lead courageous office conversations

1. Set your intentions clearly

The goal is to provide a secure space for every person to share their experience, whatever it is, not to fix or solve anything. All feelings, concerns, hopes or anxieties are welcome. This is a time to share questions and concerns and to provide an opportunity for everyone to ask for support.

2. Create a container

Set up dedicated time to have this talk, at least 60 to 90 minutes,. Make sure everyone is expected to join and participate. If you're a leader, express how important this conversation is and support your team to clear their calendars. This works great on video conferencing technology to ensure everyone is physically safe.

3. Prepare facilitators & groups 

You should start together in a large group and then break into groups of about six to eight to for conversation, so prepare your breakout groups carefully.

If you have a high-trust environment where employees can have respectful conversations about tough topics, then less structure will be needed.

If your organization has low trust; if COVID, race or politics are charged topics for you; or if there is a wide variety of thought, feeling and opinion across your business, more facilitation and organization may be needed to create a positive experience.

The goal is to ensure that each person feels they can share freely without judgment or criticism, even when individuals may disagree. Designate a facilitator who can manage that kind of discussion for each group.

4. Set it up

Start your meeting together, with a senior leader sharing the intentions and ground rules with everyone. Focus on the company values that are appropriate to this discussion (for example Care and Be Curious are the two Great Place To Work values most appropriate to this experience.)

Ask everyone to keep the specifics of who said what confidential—we can share the discussion generally, but it’s better not to quote individuals, to avoid misrepresenting them.

Then split into your groups. 카지노 커뮤니티 랭킹 Chief Diversity & Innovation Officer Tony Bond created these simple discussion questions to get us started:

• Check in with each other
• How are you experiencing what’s happening?
• What are you confused about?
• How can I support you?
• How can we support each other?
• How do you find hope to keep going?

5. Open with vulnerability

Each facilitator should set the tone by opening with some personal truth and vulnerability. Participants will take their lead, and determine how safe the space is, from the leader’s openness and honesty.

6. Have the discussion

Keep the focus on sharing personal stories and feelings. Ensure that each person gets an opportunity to speak at least once, if they want to. Help curb interruption and cross-talk to give open airtime to all.

And if folks hold differing opinions, that’s OK. But do not allow anyone to debate or negate another person’s personal experience.

When speaking about race, gender, religion, or any other demographic, do not ask a person to speak on behalf of a group they may belong to. For example, do not ask Black people or other people of color to explain racism, “tell me how I can help,” or share a list of resources to educate anyone else.

While strong feelings are welcome, including tears, there should never be an expectation that anyone in the group has to make another feel better.

7. Come back together and close

Bring the small groups back together and invite voluntary comments from anyone who wishes to share their experience. The senior leader should then close with gratitude for everyone’s participation and explain any personal resources available for folks that want them.

8. Support each other

If specific requests for support have been expressed, do whatever you can as an organization to deliver those. If a conversation went sideways in a breakout, the facilitator should call in your HR leaders and team leader(s) to help work it out or resolve it. Don’t ignore a messy problem: It’s better to get in there and at least try to make it right.

9. Keep it going

This is not a one-and-done situation. We will all need to keep having conversations about the state of the world for the time being. If this format works, great! If not, find or use whatever fits your company culture.

Moving forward

In my own personal experience, I did not want to have this conversation at the time. It felt hard and frustrating. But after having it, I feel clearer, calmer and more secure knowing it’s okay for me to be a real human and bring my whole self to work.

I know that my leaders and co-workers all care about me and my experience. And I got to tell them that I care about theirs, too. I built relationships with people I don’t know very well and was able to share some vulnerability and build trust.

Plus—if those valuable outcomes aren’t enough for you—productivity is a cherry on the top. After our courageous conversation, I could get back to work and focus in a way that certainly wouldn’t have happened without the discussion.

So be brave and go for it.

Tell us how your discussions went and what other resources you need. Great Place To Work^® is here to help you create a great workplace For All^℧.