I was not familiar with the concept of “layoff” when I was in India. My father used to work in a jute mill and occasionally faced “lock outs” which meant that gates of the mill were locked by the company and no employee was allowed to enter the premises and work; they did not get paid either. Lockouts typically happened during labour disputes and affected the entire employee pool.
However, these were temporary events and activities went back to normal once disputes were resolved. There was firing or termination of individual employees because of poor performance or major violation of company rules. However, I did not know that employees could be laid off simply because a company thought that there were too many employees and just wanted to reduce their number.
In those days, any employment meant a lifetime job security. I became a manager at RCA Consumer Electronics division in Indianapolis, USA in the mid-1980s. Coincidentally, layoffs became common phenomena during the Reagan era because companies focused on improving their bottom lines to make shareholders happy; merger/acquisition, followed by downsizing, became the norm. I took several management courses at the local university at the company’s expense.
I was even selected to attend a prestigious management training programme in New York. However, none of these courses nor the associated textbooks had anything to say about layoffs or how to lay employees off. Unfortunately, this lack of knowledge came back to haunt me when the mighty GE corporation purchased the entire RCA in 1986. Jack Welch, the then CEO of GE was well-known for his ruthless downsizing by conducting massive layoffs; he had the nickname “Neutron Jack”; like the nuclear particle neutron, he did not destroy buildings, only people’s lives. This essay recounts three layoffs I was forced to undertake as part of my management job under GE.
Layoffs started shortly after GE’s acquisition of RCA. Ironically, the first incident happened right after I returned from my management course in New York whose purpose was to train us on how to improve manufacturing and become a “worldclass” company. I returned full of energy and ideas on how to implement many of the lessons I learned from the course. I found my boss Robert pacing outside my office when I showed u p f o r w o rk t h e d a y a f t e r m y return. He informed me that while I was gone a management decision had been made to implement a sizable layoff of engineers.
Robert represented me in the meetings and designated a new engineer, Jim, in my group as the candidate to be laid off. I concurred because Jim was yet to make any significant contribution and was somewhat reclusive in his social interactions. Robert told me to corner Jim as soon as he came to work and give him this bad news myself before he f o u n d o u t f ro m t h e “s t re e t rumours”. In his mind, this was the proper and humane thing to do. Not only did I instantly lose all the newfound enthusiasm for my job, I had no idea on how to conduct this meeting.
Should I be very brief and get right to the point or should I take time to give him some background information about the company’s financial situation and GE’s plans? Should I look into his eyes or look away? Do I leave some time at the end for answering his questions? How would I handle it if he had an emotional breakdown? There was no guidance for me and even the Human Resource (HR) department was not involved. I had to do it from the seat of my pants.
Fortunately, Jim was a quiet guy and did not even say a single word. I hated every second of that meeting. We knew that there would be a second round of layoffs. Managers at my level bitterly complained to our superiors that this must be done more systematically, and we must give the engineers ample time to prepare both financially and emotionally. Our bosses listened and came up with a “scientific” approach. All first level managers identified their weak employees and got together to prepare a forced ranking based on four criteria: seniority, criticality of their jobs, flexibility, and performance. We were told to inform the affected engineers near the bottom of the ranking several weeks before the next layoff.
The guy in my department was Larry: a recently married and cheerful engineer. I called Larry to my office and gave him a rundown of the entire process; not only the company’s financial background but how managers came up with the forced ranking. Finally, I said “Larry, unfortunately, from my group, you are at the bottom”. I stopped there and did not explicitly tell him that he would be laid off on a specific date. I figured that he was smart enough to put two and two together.
Much to my surprise, I noticed that Larry started to work unusually hard after that meeting; often working late, staying beyond quitting time and sometimes even working weekends. I realized that he did not get my message; he thought that I was saying that being at the bottom of the list he must improve by putting extra effort. Larry’s wife Rose also worked at our company. Much to my embarrassment, she not only understood the implication of my message, but also mentioned the situation to her boss Peter, one of my colleagues, implying that I had not delivered my message to Larry properly.
Peter informed me about the situation. I was exasperated; it was time for me to call Larry in once again and deliver the message bluntly and advise him to start looking for another job and do appropriate financial planning. This meeting was even more excruciating than my meeting with Jim. Fortunately, Larry managed to get a job at another local company in a short period of time, putting an end to my guilt trip. My third experience with a layoff, a few months later, was a little easier. This time it was an elderly engineer, Ed, in his late fifties with more than twenty-five years of work experience in the company and eligible for a hefty pension plus severance package.
He was a grumpy man and not well-liked. He did not seem to be too thrilled to work for a “know it all” young Indian. I called him for a meeting, gave him the news over coffee while trying to build a rapport with him. I criticized what GE was doing to engineers by these layoffs. I confided that I did not feel secure in my job myself and was trying to get a job at Sony in San Diego. Ed was not shocked at the turn of events and volunteered that both his married daughters lived in the San Diego area.
He was implying that he would gladly work for me again if I could find him an opportunity at Sony. Unfortunately for him, that never happened. Layoffs are now part of life in the US and have become common also in India. I do not know how they are handled these days in either country. I know that HR is more involved in providing support to laid-off workers in job hunting. Mass layoffs are typical and announced in group meetings. One-on-one layoffs are much more stressful. I strongly feel that all managers must be trained in how to conduct layoffs, or these should be done by AI robots, devoid of emotions and guilt.
(The writer, a physicist who worked in industry and academia, is a Bengali settled in America.)