Sunday, August 25, 2013

PERSONAL SPECIAL.............. Laid off from Work, but Not From Life



Laid off from Work, but Not From Life 

Layoffs are no longer a matter of stigma. 
The whys and hows of this shift

When he was laid off in early 2009, Ajay (name changed), a sales professional at an insurance company, took it hard. “It was stressful…very hard to believe this could happen to me,” he recalls.
Ajay was let go in another round of rationalisation at another firm a few months back. But four years later, his response is different.
“It’s not that bad now,” he says. What has changed? “I had no confidence then that I would get a job. This time I am sure I will,” says the 30-something. Ajay is an example of a decisive shift in India’s white collar culture — executives aren’t seeing layoffs as a stigma, neither are employers. As the slowdown bites, employees are realising getting laid off is not a mark of personal failure.  
Four Broad Reasons for the Change
The anxiety is still there, but not the shame. “End of one job does not mean end of employability. Insecurity is not about the next job, but about how good the offer will be,” says Santrupt Misra, Director, Global HR & CEO, Carbon Black Business at Aditya Birla Group.
The ‘I’m Laid Off, I’m Sort of OK’ phenomenon is explained by several factors. ET’s conversations with many employers, HR heads, headhunters and executives who have taken being laid off in their stride identified four broad reasons for what is clearly a big change in India’s white collar culture.
One, the concept of contingency workforce — people who work for short term — has caught up. Related changes are the dilution of the distinction between permanent and temporary jobs and job hopping becoming the new normal.
Prithvi Shergill, Chief HR Officer at HCL Technologies, explains the change by pointing out that the sudden disappearance in the demand for a skillset can make a valuable job obsolete. Employees are far more familiar with market-led fortune changes now, HR professionals say. Getting comfortable with getting laid off is a part of this learning process.
Misra points out that when 20-somethings take six-month breaks to figure out what they want to do next and when even the attitude of middle managers is changing, the high value placed on certainty in employment naturally goes down. Plus, say HR experts, higher salaries have afforded a bigger cushion for people who are job hunting.
Two, globalisation has made Indian executives more familiar with the Western idea that getting laid off is part of market ups and downs, not a matter of personal failure. Navnit Singh, Chairman and Managing Director, India, Korn/Ferry International, recalls how layoffs in banking became a big issue for employers and employees in 2001. A HR head then, Singh says layoffs were traumatic, families often broke up. But now, after more than a decade of being an increasingly globalised economy, “people and organisations have learned to live with layoffs”.
Three, the talent market has learnt to differentiate between those laid off for nonperformance and those who are let go because of company-wide rationalisation.
As Piyush Mehta, HR head, Genpact, says, there’s “heightened sensitivity about the reasons behind layoffs”. Agrees Padmaja Alaganandan, Executive Director, PwC. “There is a lot more maturity in the way employers look at talent…even for those laid off, they are judged by their merit.”
Chaitali Mukherjee, Country Manager, Right Management, a career transition firm, makes the same point. “There is no undue emphasis on the event (being laid off). It is more about whether the applicant has the right skillset.”
Four, India Inc has become more sensitive – many marquee companies now prepare and hand-hold executives even as they plan rationalisation.
Eight months ago, a leading bank that’s been facing business uncertainty called Korn/Ferry’s Singh to coach and counsel its second-rung leadership. The idea was to prepare the executives for any eventuality. The bank wanted to make sure its people were taken care of even when jobs were lost. “Companies have started to make sure employees get help, coaching, and formal or informal outplacement in bad times. They are building their image even in a slowdown,” Singh says.
Another illustrative example: About two months back, a consulting firm had a round of workforce rationalisation. The HR head was busy breaking the bad news to a set of employees, but she was simultaneously trying to connect those same executives to clients and colleagues to seek job opportunities for them.
All these reasons and the ‘I’m Laid Off, I’m Sort of OK, phenomenon they have engendered were playing out at a Gurgaon office recently.
Right Management’s Mukherjee was in a session with a dozen executives who were going through layoffs for the second time in 5 years. Most belonged to the BFSI (banking, financial services and insurance) and telecom sectors. “This time around they know it is not the end of the world. They see value in discussing their career path,” – that was her primary observation.
Some still wondered why they were laid off twice, Mukherjee said. But not one executive was crushed or defeated. No one felt stigmatised.
They were laid off. And they were pretty much OK.
SAUMYA BHATTACHARYA ET130812

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