When The

ehind every acquisition, every merger, every company downsizing, there's a human side that needs to be considered.

But the news headlines fail to address this vital issue. Employees let go during a downsizing become charges against quarterly earnings. Displaced workers from mergers or acquisitions are called "redundancies."

What's worse, those employees left to make the widgets or meet productivity goals often suffer from what's called "survivors' guilt." While they are thankful for retaining their jobs, they are saddened that close friends and colleagues aren't around anymore. And the survivors generally have to pick up the slack of displaced coworkers.

"One would be blind not to realize that layoffs happen during mergers and acquisitions to achieve economic savings," says Ken Goldstein, an economist at The Conference Board, New York. "It's egotistical to think, 'It won't happen to me.'"

The engines of business still run following traumatic changes, but it's up to top management whether those engines get back on track or drive straight off a cliff.



Look Inward

The key to remaining confident, Goldstein advises, is for workers to stay on top of their skill sets, or what he calls "swimming on top." Corporate managers must guide workers through the process—even when they must let go of talented employees.

Helping people find and exploit their natural abilities will benefit workers in every job situation, says Bob McDonald, president of McDonald Consulting in Atlanta and an independent consultant for 30 years. "When you help people understand their talents, it gives them transportable knowledge," McDonald says. "It helps in the post-merger world to have a common language to communicate. For the group that might be leaving, they can describe their talents to their next potential employer."

In his work, McDonald helps individuals look inward at their talents, skills and interests. Many outward-looking workers will feel a loss of control and get anxious about events when they aren't in the driver's seat.

"When I work with companies and teams, I help employees get a picture of their talents and how they can envision a fit between what the company needs and what they can do," McDonald says. "It helps employee satisfaction and productivity and helps cement that connection to the company."

That connectivity always is threatened by major upheaval—especially when a company is the target of an acquisition or merger, says Mitchell Marks, an organizational psychologist and management consultant based in San Francisco, who notes that 75 percent of mergers are financial failures. "You are entitled to be anxious," he says.

Still, Marks urges workers to be patient, giving management the benefit of the doubt when it comes to blending workforces and cultures. "First companies merge, then they figure out how to integrate," he says. "It's better to take time to plan and integrate versus making rash decisions."

Terms such as "business as usual" and "no culture clash" are red flags to watch for from acquiring companies, which Marks calls "totally insensitive" to the human stress involved. "Employees don't come to work thinking about culture," Marks says. "When [employees] are thrust into a merger situation, it increases awareness about how they do things versus how others do things. When you feel threatened, you tend to hold on to your way of doing things."



Cultural Blind Spots

Joining companies involves number-crunching and due diligence, but there seems to be a management blind spot toward culture, notes Chris Musselwhite, president of Discovery Learning, Greensboro, N.C. "We'll make them like us" and "give them six months and they'll adapt" can often be heard in executive offices following an acquisition or merger. While those sentiments are easy to say, he says, the reality of bringing them to fruition often can be challenging.

Musselwhite suggests that managers conduct a cultural survey of both companies and gauge each company's strength in strategic areas for the betterment of the surviving entity. However, "one company will buy another for a certain thing," he says, "then crush that very thing by cultural misassimilation."

Quickly taking stock of both companies to find the best of both is "imperative and critical" to keep employees happy and productive, says veteran consultant Randi Brenowitz, principal of Brenowitz Consulting, Palo Alto, Calif.

Failure of a company to have an adequate plan puts the burden on workers, Brenowitz says. "They'll occupy space and not give you their full attention and leave when they can."

While a change in company size or culture can be difficult, it opens up opportunities for growth and development, allowing managers to revisit the inventory of potential projects.

"From our perspective, it's an excellent time to develop processes at the line level," says Jim Mooney, senior vice president of High Point, N.C.-based Farr Associates, a human system development consulting firm. Such processes would include line supervisors and others closest to workplace changes, he says, and supervisor development if it's an area that has been neglected in the past. Projects could include process improvement or quality improvement initiatives.

A company merger also offers a great opportunity to redirect employee energies. "What do [employees] take home at night: Am I next? or Am I appreciated?" asks Mooney.

Teaching employees how to work better and smarter should not only benefit the company's bottom line, the investment in each worker should also boost esteem and heighten loyalty during a difficult time.



Smoothing It Over

Laughter remains the best medicine when dealing with difficulty, says Ann Fry, president of Humor University, Austin, Texas, a training and coaching company committed to eradicating terminal seriousness.

"The obvious thing for those who have been downsized is to appreciate what you have," says Fry. "Especially in light of what happened on Sept. 11, not having a job is a small consequence."

Humor is all about perspective, says Fry. Seeing life or particular situations in a different way can help boost one's morale. "No one can restore your sense of humor," says Fry. "It's up to the individual."

Thinking about a problem from someone else's viewpoint, such as a famous comedian, can put a problem in perspective. "You have to learn to be in the moment," she says. "See, look, learn to get in touch with the moment. Make decisions in the moment, instead."

Long-standing rules about employment and workers' attitudes about their jobs went out the door following the September attacks, says Helene King, ceo of cope, the Washington-based employee assistance provider. "It caused a lot of people to rethink their career paths," she says. "A lot of women are rethinking working so hard and having someone else raise their kids."

For those employees who remain in the workplace, finding a good fit between individual talents and a company's needs goes a long way to promote a sense of self-worth. Even prior to the Sept. 11 tragedy and the recent economic downturn, many employees didn't have the opportunity to assess their value to the company before being let go. Downsizings have become one of the favored options to provide a quick fix to investors who are anxious about their portfolios.

But companies considering layoffs should take a long-term view of what fewer workers may mean when the economy begins to expand again, advises Goldstein from The Conference Board.

During the early 1990s, many companies laid off up to 10 percent of their employees. But a couple of years later, those same companies needed to rehire workers—all of whom had to be trained not only for their particular jobs, Goldstein says, but also in the company culture and job expectations.

The economic forecaster and labor market analyst predicts the current economic uncertainty will become "a blessed memory in a short period of time." Goldstein sees an expansion occurring before 2003 that will drop the U.S. unemployment rate back to the 4 percent range.

"The person who gets let go may not be available two or three years later when unemployment gets low," Goldstein says. "Maybe the smart thing is to hold onto people and retrain them."

How a company handles itself during a downsizing speaks volumes, says Marks, author of Joining Forces: Making One Plus One Equal Three in Mergers, Acquisitions and Alliances (Jossey-Bass, 1998). Waves of layoffs instead of making cuts at one time indicate that management doesn't have an effective plan and is insensitive to workers, he says. How respectfully management treats those employees who are let go also is telling, Marks says. Did the company provide a fair severance with sufficient notice to affected workers, or were they given a box for their personal items and then escorted to the door by security?

During a downsizing, employers need to pay as much attention to those who remain with the organization as they do to those being let go, says Musselwhite from Discovery Learning. Workers need to get together, either collectively in smaller groups or one-on-one with a counselor, to acknowledge what has happened and move past it.

"Employees need a chance to say how they're feeling and that it's natural," says Musselwhite. "Resistance is an important part of the change process. Ignoring [employees] won't help matters and may leave people more entrenched."



Matt Bolch is a freelance writer for Training. edit@trainingmag.com