Up in The Air Layoffs
| Posted in General | Posted on 07-05-2010 | 325 views
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You are sitting alone in your cubicle staring at your screen trying to finish one of your tasks, you finish the task, pick your task list, and tick the one you finished then you start on the next one, it has been very exhausting since the company has laid off many team members, as a result you had to take on all their work, as soon as you start on the next task you get a phone call from someone you don’t know asking you to come to the meeting room, you go to the meeting room, ten minutes later you are officially laid off!
The above situation is the main theme of Up in The Air movie, it is about Ryan Bingham a guy whose job is to fire people, the movie is based on Up in The Air novel that was written by the American writer Walter Kim, the story is built on 3 pillars, first is the methodology of the layoff, in fact there is not methodology for layoff!, second is about a self-help philosophy that Ryan teaches, third is about Ryan’s personal life. The main topic I am addressing in this article is the layoff topic; this is not a movie review, it is merely about sharing my thoughts about layoffs.
The movie starts with some interviews with some people who are getting laid off by Ryan, the people who played laid off employees roles are not actors, these are people who already have lost their jobs, one of the best decisions the director, Jason Reitman, has made was to publish an ad in the newspapers looking for people who have been laid off and interested in contributing to a documentary, the director asked those real actors to say and do what they have done when they got laid off or to say what they they wanted to say but couldn’t, the following are some of the employees’ quotes
“This is what l get in return for 30 years of service for my company? And they send some yo-yo like you in here, to try to tell me that I’m out of a job? They should be telling you you’re out of a job”
“You have a lot of gall coming in here and firing your number one producer,and then you’re going to go home tomorrow and make more money than you’ve ever made in your life,and I’m going to go home without a pay check. F*ck you”
“l just…l guess you leave me dumbfounded, l don’t know where this is coming from, how am l supposed to go back as a man and explain this to my wife that l lost my job?”
“On a stress level, I’ve heard that losing your job is like a death in the family. But personally, l feel more like the people l worked with were my family and l died”
Why Companies Hire Someone to Sack employees?
I will wear the organization’s hat for a moment and try to answer this question, answering this question does not mean that I am with the companies who do layoffs in such a way,
1- Why me: people will need to get justifications and will need to know why they have been laid off while the rest of colleagues are still there, companies who sack employees do not have time to explain, they often do it in a very fast way, an outsider can simply escape answering this question
2- What to do next: employees will try to share their worries and will try to awaken the conscience of employers, but since the company has already decided to terminate someone they won’t really care about the way sacked employees will survive
3- Avoiding Legal Implications: companies will try to avoid legal implications by hiring experts to get it done with the least possible loss, layoff experts will try to distract the employee by many ways such as giving 3X pay and extended medical insurance, and by trying to get employees look at the full half, the full half can be anything that will differ from one employee to another, one sentence that Ryan used in the movie to motivate laid off employees is:
Anybody who ever built an empire or changed the world sat where you are right now, and it’s because they sat there they were able to do it
4- Understanding Criteria: employees will try to find ways to understand the criteria based on which they have been sacked and they will try to stop the layoff, Steven, the guy in the picture, asked whether he did something wrong and how he can change himself to stop the layoff, Ryan answered that it is not a performance review and it has nothing to do with Steven’s productivity, Ryan tried to get Steven distracted by asking him not to take the layoff personally! Most of times criteria is never disclosed, it could be productivity, seniority, pay, work in hand, demographics, and it could be personal favouritism as well, what is common amongst layoff criteria is that they are always kept secret, it is also very important to notice that some organizations are using recession to fire people they don’t like, the following is a quote from Human Resources Manager in a bank, quote is taken from Gulf Talent Employment and Salary Trends in the Gulf 2009-2010
We used the opportunity to get rid of some people that we should not have hired in the first place
5- They don’t have the guts: employers are not courageous enough to sack employees, imagine a boss trying to lay off his best employee, it would be very difficult to the boss to justify the reasons considering the bright record of the employee, the employee also may get very angry and do crazy stuff, that’s why employers usually disable accounts and access cards of employees as soon as they finish the lay off, it would also make the employee more angry to be laid off in minutes and to see that the employer doesn’t trust him enough to keep the access card for few days, on the other hand if the whole situation is handled by an outsider it would reduce the employee’s tension, however having to meet someone for the first time who simply tells the employee he is out of job would make the employee more angry, you know what, it is complicated!
Terminators in the Real World
I have been so curious to find out whether layoff agents aka terminators work the same way as has been shown in Up in The Air, it was not easy to find an answers, eventually I found out that some other people thought about the same thing, Kathleen Pender has interviewed some human resources professionals and wrote about the interviews in her article Bringing Up in The Air down to earth, in a nutshell, the HR professionals confirmed that they have to deal with layoffs and it actually represents part of their jobs, on the other hand they criticized the movie saying that it has covered only a glimpse of what they do as the layoff has to be preceded with some planning and preparations and it would be very boring to audience to watch George Clooney working on a spreadsheet. HR consultants require some representative from the company to be present during the layoff discussion so they won’t be alone while giving someone the axe! I think it would make no difference for the employee as long as all the ways lead to the same result and it would make no sense for the employee if the company representative is not known to him, my conclusion is that the movie is 80% close to reality, and maybe more than 80%!
What To Do About Layoff
In the movie, Ryan tries to motivate people who have been laid off by telling them that it is time you can do what you have always wanted to do but you couldn’t due to life’s pressure and work commitment, while this approach is somehow deceptive it may not be totally wrong, the one has to control his emotions and try to tame the frustration and reduce stress associated with tough experience, at the end of the day, frustration won’t change anything it will just make the one in worse condition and will have negative impacts on health, toward the end of the movie same real actors have been called to say how they could survive and what helped them to alleviate the pain of this tough experience, in fact some of them were lucky to find new jobs and they had to take permission from their boss before taking the final shots, I have seen some people who have been laid off and joined better companies with higher positions, the one may also use the time to learn new stuff, get a degree, try something new, or get closer to family and friends who are the main source of help and support
Never lose yourself, believe that no matter how long the darkness is, it still is temporary!
I have come across study results have shown that people who have not been laid off are more stressful than the ones who already have lost their jobs, this is somehow correct, imagine yourself standing down a hill and you expect a rock to fall and smash your head anytime but you don’t know when it will fall, if you can do something to mitigate job loss, just do it, if not, then you’d better stop worrying, it is an area of interest but you may not be able to influence it.
Share Your Experience
It has taken me a very long time before I decided to write about layoff because of its sensitive nature, I would greatly appreciate if you can share your experience with layoffs whether you have been laid off and want to give tips about how to cope with it to help people or you have seen the movie and have some views you want to share. Could you figure out the layoff criteria? Please share your experience, Thank you so much for your contribution!
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First, a general comment: hiding behind the outsider who does the dirty job is just bad management. A good manager should be there, doing the worst of managerial tasks, because that is what they get paid for (among other of course).
Coming further if a manager can’t justify the decision in any reasonable way it means the decision itself was wrong and hiring the outsider to do the job won’t change it.
And I have pretty broad definition of reasonable argument: firing good performer because of the crisis is fine for me, same as letting a person go despite good work because of problems he has with others etc.
I don’t say fired person must automatically accept the explanation, pretty often she won’t, but if a manager can’t stand in front of a mirror and tell to himself “it was hard, but I know why I did this and I’m OK with the decision” something is really wrong.
Second, I once wrote a post titled how to fire people which goes through different ways of taking parts with an employee. Some of advices can be useful especially when there isn’t much economical pressure on the company and they can invest some time and money for example to find a more suitable place in organization for an employee or just give him some more time.
Third, personally I was fired and I believe everyone should be fired at least once in their lives. Really. It teaches you that it’s all about business after all. Despite opinions you may hear here and there that workplace is for someone like second family, like the guy you mentioned in the post, in vast majority of cases it is just a business. Not a family, not a charity. Just business. And even if work in the same place of 20 years one shouldn’t expect it is something more.
Hello Pawel,
For first point, most of times the decision is not justifiable because it is not based on any rationale and so it is not a correct decisions like many decisions that we see in business world, the manager himself may not be the decision maker, under this lousy economic climate, companies are under too much pressure to take proper decisions, they are in fact blinded by cost cutting, and think of big enterprises,how many times should they give justifications with the massive number of layoffs they are having, the justification may be pretty much self-explanatory “Recession!”, and as per the quote provided by a bank HR manager above, many companies use the recession to do what they couldn’t do before, like firing unwanted employees, cutting benefits, etc.
For third point, I couldn’t agree with you more, yes it is a business not a family, the problem is that most of people try to convince themselves that they work with family not colleagues, and they only wake up when they get screwed up by politics or destructive competition. For employees who spend decades in the same company it is very easy to think in that way, and it becomes too difficult to them to think otherwise, the bottom line is, you provide a service, you get paid, you do quality work and you get paid, at the end of the day if you are not of any value to a company, they wouldn’t hesitate to give you the axe!
We still need to work on our emotional intelligence to remove emotions and perceive things in their exact nature.
Thank you Pawel for sharing your views!
Looks like links are cut out from comments, so here’s address of the article on how to fire people: http://blog.brodzinski.com/2006/10/how-to-fire-people.html
Hi Kareem
Great article as usual ,
My thoughts about this issue from employee perspective is you must look at the good point for any action you face from the others and try to extract the full good points from it.
As the terminator said in the movie
“Anybody who ever built an empire or changed the world sat where you are right now, and it’s because they sat there they were able to do it”
I think this is totally true.
Easier said than done, what the terminator used to tell the sacked employees was said to distract them and help them get out of this situation, I’d call it BS!
While I think looking at the positive side always helps, however the context is what I am worried about, I’d prefer the employee realizes this himself rather than the terminator telling the employee, like I said in the post about people who got better opportunities because they lost their jobs, this is one patter on what life can offer, yet telling someone ” Sorry you have been fired, but you know what you can use the free time to do things you’ve not been able to do because of the job, like playing video games!”
Kareem
I didn’t like the movie, but, I did like your article. Though, Layoff people like that isn’t healthy, People should be notified and encouraged to find another job, even, Company can find other jobs for them, I have seen some companies do that.
As per that banker that took the crises problem as an opportunity to fire people, this is very unfair.
I’d tell the employee myself better than others, or give some introductions about the current company standings before layoff people, it may help.
On the other hand, maybe getting a third party can help, but, the company’s management should be involved as well, at least it’s like an appreciation to the employee even if it looks so hard and cruel.
Thanks again Kareem
Hey this is a great post, very informative. Thank you for sharing this.
Thanks for the article. I quite enjoyed the movie, and the book was quite reasonable, too (although I found it varied in feeling from the movie).
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Hey Kareem, Really very great insights you provided and indeed it helped me to write some thing in my blog. Thanks a lot.