Keeping the Peace When Layoffs Come

By: Randy Dotinga There's no way to make a round of layoffs look pretty to anyone other than an investor obsessed with profits. But newspapers, never known as the kindest of employers, can still do a lot to make job cuts less painful.

As newspapers like The Seattle Times and San Francisco Chronicle consider new rounds of layoffs, here are some tips for bosses from the experts.

1. Give plenty of notice or none.

There's plenty of debate over exactly when newspapers should alert employees to the prospect of layoffs. But one thing is clear -- somewhere between weeks and hours lies a twilight zone that gives workers too little time to make plans and too much time to stress out.

Not surprisingly, employee unions prefer as much notice as possible. "One of the things that creates the most unrest is the secrecy that surrounds layoffs," said Marian Needham, former director of contract negotiations with the Newspaper Guild. "Frequently, there's a harbinger of doom before anything actually happens, and people are on eggshells. Why does it have to be that way?"

Needham, who now works as a guild sector representative in Buffalo, N.Y., suggests that bosses give employees a heads-up. "In some places, management has been up front: 'In the next three months, we know we'll have to lose X jobs from these classifications.'"

But bosses must balance the need for advance notice with their own desire to prevent employees from worrying for weeks on end. Marshall Anstandig, vice president and senior labor and employment counsel for San Jose, Calif.-based Knight Ridder, prefers a quick process. "After having made an announcement, you've got the lingering effects, the pall that it casts over a work environment for a month before people leave," he said. "That creates a horrible situation for those who will be leaving and those who will remain."

2. Balance safety with respect.

Fears about workplace violence and sabotage have led many companies to turn layoffs into a chilly tableau of security guards and disactivated computer passwords.

Some laid-off employees do indeed express their displeasure before leaving the building. After she was laid off from a southern California newspaper in 1992, one of my co-workers sat still at her keyboard, coolly erasing her list of sources and every single one of the dozens of stories on her computer.

But Pam Johnson, former editor of The Arizona Republic in Phoenix, said there's something wrong with a system that prevents workers from retrieving e-mails, research, and other material from their computers. "It's sure awkward," said Johnson, now a leadership and management instructor with the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Fla. "You've been there 15-20 years and in five minutes you're out the door."

Perhaps the best solution is to allow workers to recover their belongings and access their computers, but only during specified off-hours when disruption to the entire workplace will be limited.

3. Inform and reassure the staff.

Don't pretend that nothing happened, as one northern California newspaper did recently after layoffs. Employees were left to gather information through the grapevine.

"You have to remember everybody is watching," said Mark A. Wilson, a North Carolina State University psychologist who specializes in the workplace. According to him, the process of a layoff "is a good example of the core values of a company. Does the organization treat people with dignity? Is there some sort of respect?"

Through memos or e-mails, explain as much as you can about the layoff decisions. First, deal with the future. "You want to make sure you've had some kind of conversation or dialogue with the remaining employees so they have a sense of whether the layoffs have concluded," said Anstandig of Knight Ridder.

Then, deal with the past. How were the layoff decisions made? Were they based on lack of seniority? Job performance? A combination of factors? If you don't provide explanations, workers will make up some of their own.

"It's not that folks expect there won't be layoffs," Needham said. "What they're looking for is a system that provides fairness and rationality in how it gets done, so they can see that there's not favoritism, discrimination, and disparate treatment."

Remember that explanations will stick in the minds of employees long after you may have forgotten them. If you got rid of workers because they were poor performers, don't pretend that you eliminated their positions because they weren't needed. Everyone will notice when the jobs get filled again.

"As weeks go by and you still talk to your co-workers, it settles real bad when they say so-and-so is doing your job after they told you that you weren't needed anymore," said Toledo (Ohio) Blade news assistant Lillian Covarrubias, president of the paper's Newspaper Guild local.