Managing Your Career
By Joann Lublin
AUGUST 5, 2008
During a recent commuter-ferry ride, I overheard a pair of investment bankers swap strategies for weathering rumored job cuts at their employer.
“I’m hanging garlic over my office door,” one banker joked.
Hanging a smelly talisman is only slightly less useful than confronting your boss about rumors that your name is on a layoff list. If the scuttlebutt proves false, you risk appearing insecure. If it’s true, you may hasten your exit.
There are better ways to handle workplace gossip about a potential pink slip. The best approach: Be prepared.
Auto makers, brokerages, retailers, airlines, home builders, newspapers and countless other ailing industries are slashing staff. Your job could disappear tomorrow. “If the rumors are swirling, you should spend a minimum of two hours a day getting ready for your next career move,” recommends Dee Soder, managing partner of CEO Perspective Group, an executive-advisory firm in New York.
Your highest priority should be an updated résumé, focused on your most marketable skills. Transfer your latest performance review, summary of achievements, work samples and laudatory customer letters to a jump drive — a portable computer-storage device — so you can retrieve them from outside the office.
Melissa DeCosta-Smith wasn’t fully prepared when a dealer of decorative home hardware discharged her and nine co-workers in April — partly because management had denied rumored cuts. “I got walked out that day,” with no chance to collect the results of a just-completed project, the product marketing manager recalls.
After she returned days later for her personal items, a human-resources executive stood guard to make sure that she took no official documents.
Ms. DeCosta-Smith intends to behave differently once she lands new employment. “I will assume that every day is my last day,” she vows.
You also can plan for a possible job hunt by installing a business phone line at home. One executive did so when she caught wind of a shake-up in her 4,000-employee unit. She added the new number to her business card two weeks before her company announced dismissals this spring. She survived.
On hearing layoff rumors, many people “hunker down, try to become invisible and hope they won’t be noticed,” says Anne Baber, a managing partner of Contacts Count, a training and consulting firm in Silver Spring, Md. “Those are all the wrong things to do.”
Instead, you should make sure the top brass sees — and appreciates — your catalog of recent accomplishments. “You must take subtle action to get feedback in a way that doesn’t make it look like you’re scared,” suggests David D’Alessandro, author of the book “Executive Warfare.”
His efforts to keep higher-ups informed helped save his midlevel-management job at John Hancock Financial Services years ago. While Mr. D’Alessandro struggled to fix three sick divisions, disgruntled lieutenants gossiped that he’d get axed in an expected reorganization. He sent a four-page progress report to several senior executives of the Boston insurer, then discussed his memo for 90 minutes with his boss and his boss’s boss.
“I never got an indication in the meeting that I was in trouble,” Mr. D’Alessandro remembers. His superiors encouraged him to keep pursuing the turnaround. He realized the layoff rumors about him were false, “without having to ask,” he says.
Soon after, his divisions suffered layoffs. John Hancock not only spared him, it subsequently promoted him to chief executive.
Seeking legal counsel before the pink slip arrives is another smart move, according to Laurel Bellows, a Chicago employment attorney. That’s especially important for anyone who feels she has a complaint that might be covered under bias, whistle-blower or other employment laws.
Whether or not you retain a lawyer, you should alert your employer promptly about any such gripes. A middle manager for a New York financial-services concern endured multiple rounds of job cuts last year. When the grapevine buzzed about further reductions, she informally complained that her supervisor played favorites. The company launched an investigation.
“We pulled her from the list” of January layoffs, a former human-resources executive recollects.
If all your efforts can’t preserve your post, “your separation benefits will come out of the very budget that has benefited from your contributions,” notes Ms. Bellows. “That value is leverage at the bargaining table” in negotiating a departure package.
Among the extras that you might request are accelerated vesting of stock grants, a partial bonus, extended health-insurance coverage and lengthy outplacement counseling. Draft your exit wish list in advance.
Source: The Wall Street Journal
