Healing the Wounds: Overcoming the Trauma of Layoffs and Revitalizing Downsized Organizations

1.1. Lessons from Act One: Juanita and Charles—Victim and Survivor

When the layoffs hit, Juanita and Charles were both department directors, the lower end of the upper-management spectrum in the high-technology firm where they worked. Juanita was in her late forties, Charles in his early fifties. Although they had traversed very different paths to their management jobs, they were equally devastated when their organization started "taking out" managers to reduce costs. They experienced similar feelings of personal violation when the implicit psychological contract between each of them and their organization went up in smoke. Although this contract was only implied, Juanita and Charles had assumed that the organization shared their belief in the ...