Corporate Grief Is An Unacknowledged Part of Corporate Change

I had to fire a lot of people in my previous job. When I worked in corporate America, my division had a large transformation effort that resulted in over 1000 people losing their jobs. Although, the effort was painful and necessary in order for our company to survive, I hated having to do it. Despite this reality, I was proud of the company for the way they treated employees with respect and how they honestly dealt with the real human emotions of loss and grief. In my experience however, most organizations do not ever confront the depth of loss experienced by such dramatic change initiatives.

America’s economic dynamism as a country has serious costs that are widely underestimated by organizations. When companies know they can’t meet their quarterly earnings targets, they often look to cut costs and labor costs are often the target. Labor means employees, and they bear the economic and emotional brunt of these changes. Companies need to constantly reinvent themselves.  As strategies change, companies shrink or add to the workforce depending on economic needs. This Darwinian “survival of the fittest” is one of the key underlying factors of America’s economic success and keeps corporations nimble and able to adjust to the ever-changing marketplace.  

I do not believe in arguing the merit of the changes themselves. Rather, I think it useful to dig more deeply into the real human emotions of those changes. Corporations spend millions on change management personnel, techniques and programs that teach employees how to flex with the times, retrain them on new operating systems and fire people they do not need anymore. In my experience, most corporations are missing a very key component to these change initiatives. By labeling the issue as solely one of organizational change, they miss much of the underlying emotion that I believe should be more honestly embraced as employee grief. This mislabeling of grief as simply “a change” underestimates the tremendously powerful emotion of grief and attempts to sweep under the rug  the true effect on employees.

By asking employees to embrace change, corporations attempt to cloak grief with the shiny veneer of positive change. People are not furniture that you can simply move around a home and plop them down in a different room and tell them “go do your work”. Their environment, their emotional bonds with their fellow employees and their boss, their daily rituals and habits all are key components of their lives. Whether the employee stays or leaves, there is an underlying emotion of grief.

With grief there is loss. Not just loss of a job, but perhaps one of a vocation. Loss of friends, family, neighbors, fellow citizens and the comraderie of working with people you care about. The Loss of a person’s mission and purpose. These and many other secondary losses that are gone immediately, without acknowledgement.

Yet many corporations view employees on an organizational chart as corporate furniture that is eminently fungible and easily moved around.  This dismissal of and contempt for the human experience of loss and the deep hidden emotion of grief in the change process is why many organizational change programs stall or fail.

So what are some actions companies can take to address this reality of corporate grief. First, give people time to make life decisions. They may have to walk through their shadow lands themselves. Ideally, they will have a period of time to grieve and say good bye. For many people I counseled, they had not written a resume in 20 years or more. Rushing these efforts does not quicken the grieving process for anyone. It makes the process even more intense.

Be as transparent as possible Treat people like adults. Our company’s rule in all our layoffs was to tell people what we know, as soon as we could once we knew a decision was made. By treating people with respect, the employees who stay as well as the ones who leave will feel differently about your company.

Acknowledge loss and talk openly about them. Entire long standing networks of friendships were destroyed in our outsourcing process. People had to move cities, states and countries to retain their jobs. Organizations can and should give time and attention to acknowledge and listen to the loss and the grief that goes with it. Walking this journey is a lonely one, but they need to know they are not alone.

Give people options if you can.

Be generous with transition time and severance.

Outsourcing placement can be helpful.

Actively promote your companies Employee Assistance Program. Talk about it. HR professionals know that these programs are vastly underutilized. Good mental health counseling should be made available to all who need it.

People can and will adjust their lives if you give them time. You must give them time and space to grieve their losses first in order for them to pick up the pieces and move forward. If you acknowledge that loss and grief will be a natural, difficult and emotional part of the “change” process, your employees will be available to move through this process more rapidly and may end feeling differently about your company in the end.

People can find meaning again. People can renew their purpose.

Had several people tell me now, that looking back on the change, it was the best thing for their careers and they are happier and more productive than ever.

Companies need to have the courage to talk openly about grief and loss however. Companies who just explain their strategy, label it a corporate change, and expect employees to immediately jump on board are fooling themselves.  Companies can not hide behind a simple announcement from the President or corporate affairs and expect that a “great new strategy” is going to convince the hearts and minds and emotions of your constituents.

When we announced our outsourcing strategy, our senior business leader stood and took questions for over an hour. All of our business and HR leaders did the same, over and over and over to explain people’s options, our process, our timeline and what to expect. At times, there was anger, disappointment, sadness and frustration expressed at these meetings, but we talked about the human emotion and not just the mechanics of the process.

Of the over 1000 people we had to let go, we never had one lawsuit and very few complaints. By treating people with respect, honest and transparency, and truthfully acknowledging their emotions of grief and loss, we ended up with a far more successful transition than we would have.  By acknowledging the deep human emotion of grief in times of corporate change, organizations can address the human experience more honestly and create a better environment for the change initiative to succeed. This helps people who are fired and those who stay.