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Layoffs call for support from employers and families - and a dose of self-help

Jean Nicol

Job loss and the threat of being laid off can have serious effects on a person's mental and physical health. Several suicides in Hong Kong have been attributed to this over the past few weeks and months.

What can be done to disrupt the thinking patterns that lead to such drastic behaviour? And what can professionals and individuals do to cope?

First, psychologists say companies need to think carefully about how to handle not only redundancies, but also the stressful period leading up to potential layoffs. This includes being as open with employees as possible and keeping them informed as circumstances change.

Fired employees are most angered by being treated in a brusque manner, by unexpected announcements, perceived unfairness, dishonesty and public humiliation.

These aggravations are all common in how most companies handle layoffs, writes Batia Wiesenfeld, a psychologist with New York University's Stern School of Business. This is often because of defensiveness on the part of the companies and the people doing the firing.

Techniques for firing people tend to be designed to minimise opportunities for employees to respond, and are carefully scripted to avoid possible litigation, points out Robert Bies, a specialist in organisational psychology at Georgetown University's School of Business.But, the less supported people feel by their company during and immediately before being laid off, the more likely they are to blame the company or manager and pursue a lawsuit, shows a recent Journal of Applied Psychology study.

Company officials responsible for relaying bad news about profitability and doing the actual firing need to work through their own emotions before confronting employees. Ideally, they should discuss their own feelings about the process and review how they intend to cope with responses they may get.

Lack of preparation is the rule, unfortunately, and managers often end up unintentionally projecting their own anxiety and anger onto employees.

It helps if structures for practical help are already put in place for laid-off employees. This does not mean handing a fired employee a leaflet about counselling or the name of an employment agency. Encouragement is required.

Fired employees should be told that other problems, exacerbated by the job loss, are included in the support system the company sponsors.

Workers should not be made to feel secretive about wanting to express their frustrations, anger and sadness. Management attitudes should indicate that this is normal.

At all costs, an atmosphere of 'crisis orientation' should be avoided. That is one of the reasons why managers need to prepare themselves emotionally before they start conveying bad news. They need to remain calm and patient while gently keeping things in perspective.

Unemployment can easily lead to a 'chain of adversity'. The cycle moves from job loss to financial strain. This leads to depression and to a feeling of lack of personal control. A person's day-to-day functioning then becomes more emotional and raw. This frequently results in deteriorating physical health and, in some sad cases, ultimately hopelessness.

Researchers have found that the chain can continue over two years following job loss, even though 71 per cent of people studied found work during that period. In particular, there was a marked increase in levels of depression and a sense of having less control over one's life.

Naturally, this can affect the sort of job an unemployed person feels they can apply for, and can degrade the skills required to find any sort of work.

This energy-sapping cycle means help is typically not sought without a great deal of encouragement, and usually only as a last desperate resort. It is up to others to help re-engage those caught in its grip.

Another contribution applied psychology has made to the problems of unemployment is in the area of self-help. Keeping a journal has long been recognised as a useful way for individuals to help themselves through a difficult time in their lives. But the Academy of Management Journal recently reported encouraging findings about coping with job loss.

Researcher Stephanie Spera and colleagues assigned a range of tasks to recently unemployed professionals in collaboration with an outplacement firm. Those participants who wrote 20 minutes a day about their deepest thoughts and feelings about their job loss found work faster than those participants instructed to write about their plans and job-search activities, or those who did no writing at all.

The results were so impressive that the researchers stopped the experiment eight months early and assigned all the participants the writing task. Both the researchers and the participants felt that the sooner they started writing, the more rapidly they would overcome the destructive effects of the experience.

Other research has shown that the effects of expressing feelings through writing are measurable in cellular immune-system functions, suggesting that confronting sensitive or traumatic experiences has physical benefits.

It is not clear exactly what happens in the mind when we write down what we feel. But it looks as if writing helps people 'digest' unexpected and unwanted experiences and get them into perspective.

How does this translate into finding a new job more quickly? It is likely that a person who has resolved some of the negative feelings following a layoff conveys something of this more positive state of mind during the interview process. And a more resolved mental state certainly helps a candidate's level of confidence, energy and imagination, all of which are required to get him the interview in the first place.

What is certain is that writing about deep thoughts and feelings can help someone cope with or even sidestep the 'chain of adversity' following a job loss. And for those lucky enough to be employed, writing may also help reduce the stress of seeing friends lose their jobs and the destabilising anxiety that it could happen to them.

Jean Nicol is a Hong Kong-based psychologist and writer

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