Mergers, lay-offs, reorganisations, and downsizings all take their toll on the employees who survive them. Whatever you call these personnel changes, the result is the same – traumatised workers.

You might assume that the people who hold on to their jobs would be grateful. In fact, they may need some of the same attention, emotional support, and counselling as laid-off employees. After all, many of their friends and coworkers are gone, their workloads have increased, and their status with the company seems more uncertain than ever.

The scenarios and solutions below show you how to recognise and treat a decline in employee morale after your company downsizes.

Scenario: Loss of focus. The shock of sudden change can make it hard for employees to prioritise, make decisions, and concentrate on work.

Solution: Coach employees in basic time management skills: Do only one thing at a time, stick to basics, break complex jobs into smaller tasks, and make to-do lists.

Scenario: Denial of the event. Once the initial shock wears off, people cope by acting as if nothing happened.

Solution: Avoidance doesn’t work. Talk to employees, and help them face the reality of the change.

Scenario: Sense of helplessness. Employees feel powerless, question their roles within the organisation, and sometimes get depressed.

Solution: Ask people who have undergone similar experiences to talk to your employees. It will help them realise that they’re not alone and that other people have gone through the same ordeal and survived.

Scenario: Time passes. After a few weeks, most folks come to terms with the change and its fallout (e.g., a friend who was let go, a move to less comfortable surroundings, etc).

Solution: Help employees acknowledge their losses, making sure to listen when they do. Afterwards, they can let go and move on.

Scenario: Readjustment. Once they let go, employees can then get comfortable with the new environment created by the change.

Solution: Push for creativity within the new environment. Celebrate successes.

Scenario: Lessons learned. Confidence with the new situation opens employees up to assimilating and using new information.

Solution: Encourage the people who have made it to this stage to help along co-workers still struggling through earlier stages.

Scenario: Embracing the future. Once employees accept and are comfortable with the new realities, the process is complete.

Solution: Celebrate. Congratulate. Give folks credit for successfully riding out the waves of change.

Remember, not all people respond well to change, especially when it means the loss of friends and co-workers. Many survivors may feel that their company treats its employees like numbers. So go out of your way be attentive to your workers’ morale so you can help their transition go as smoothly as possible.

Making work better through teaming

Jack Stack, author of “The Great Game of Business,” is famous for transforming the rusty old International Harvester into Springfield Remanufacturing Corporation by turning employees into fully involved team members. He had this to say about why teams are essential to organisational success: “You can sometimes fool the fans, but you can never fool the players.”

Here are two strategies that players — that is, team members — can use to keep themselves energised, healthy and productive at work:

• Swap duties from time to time.
  Almost everybody knows that a steep learning curve (just steep enough to be exciting, not overwhelming) keeps people jazzed. What better way is there to keep learning than to take on different tasks occasionally? For a decade now, industry has been proving that “universal operators” give work units the flexibility they need to respond to seasonal or unexpected demands. Workers who are trained to do different tasks, or whose job descriptions change in response to new challenges for their work unit, stay more engaged than their locked-in counterparts, provided that they’re informed of impending changes and given the training they need to do the new jobs well.
  
  I’ve talked to sales people, systems analysts, teachers, office workers, consumer product developers, nurses and construction workers, to name just a few, who have all gotten re-invested in their work by swapping parts of their regular jobs with others. So, I know it works. If you’re a little tired of doing your job the same old way, why not ask around in your work unit about what new tasks might interest people, and see what potential variations in how jobs are configured you might turn up? The best designers (and re-designers) of jobs are always the people doing the work. As CEO Robert Ferchat suggests, “Free people to innovate so that your company can grow. Creativity is not the divine right of management.”

• And while you’re at it, why not consider teaming up on tasks assigned to individuals?
  On the surface, deploying several people in the place of one may seem inefficient, but people who divide up their jobs among themselves and other team members have more fun and are then freed up for other projects. It’s a great way to practice better communication and collaboration as well as to experiment with “systems thinking,” unravelling the twisted knots of a messy problem back to their sources. Different perspectives, shared in an atmosphere of mutual respect, will always get a better result than the Lone Ranger approach.