Friday, November 14, 2008

The Economic Breakdown | More Layoffs

I am growing weary of writing about layoffs.


When will we recover from this economic meltdown?


When will friends that are always upbeat and positive get back to being able to be true to themselves?



From my friend Dawn Mular of Helping Friends Career Network, thoughts on layoffs:



As individual contributors, as managers, and leaders, how do we react to
such news? Is there a good way for employees to respond to news of layoff? Human
nature being what it is, here are some things we can do to react as
professionals in a way that does more damage to ourselves, and our business than
help:


  1. Survival of the Fittest Mode: Show yourself as a raving success, with
    evidence of others failures to ensure you are not the "cut" percentage.

  2. Fearful "what if" mode: Look around and try to speculate with the little
    information you have.

  3. "Its so bad, our best resource is to panic mode": If you must collect news
    to assemble how you will survive the scariest of situations, make sure you don't
    romance in limitation.

  4. "Put your head down, lock your doors and hide mode:" When fearful thoughts
    connect, remember it is networking that creates most opportunity, now is not the
    time to get introspectively alone. Give the love you want to be receiving in
    this time, it will return to you and those that are likely feeling the need for
    appreciation in a time of speculation.
Dawn works with Sun Microsystems. Sun announced a huge layoff today, almost 18% of their workforce.


Sun Microsystems Inc. is cutting up to 6,000 jobs, or 18 per cent of its
global staff, in the latest round of layoffs by the technology giant.



The Santa Clara, Calif., company said Friday the cuts will affect more
than 5,000 employees over the next year alone at a cost of $500 million to $600
million US.



But the company expects the move will save $700 million to $800 million
annually by the third quarter of 2009.


This probably needed to happen, but I am getting really tired of watching it.


I'd like to do something to help.


Human Resources professionals need to do something to start helping these people. Maybe it is time for us to do community service by offering assistance and training in job search. I am not sure can we count of the government to do it right now.


More later.

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