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Dirty Work: Human-resources managers get the unenviable job of being the one to tell workers they're being let go

AP Photo

Bill Holmes, the chief of human resources at Reebok, says he tries to prepare mentally and physically for impending layoffs.

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: March 10, 2009

SUNRISE, Fla. -- One personnel manager wakes in despair at 4 a.m., worried about the employees in her company. Another boss has to remind himself to eat right and exercise so that he can handle the stress. A third says he has had tears in his eyes for months.

They are the bearers of bad news, the Grim Reapers, the corporate executioners, the office hatchet men. They're the ones whose job is to tell employees they have been laid off. These days, they're miserable, too.

"It takes a huge amount of energy to ensure I don't get emotional," said Wendy Mahle, the human-resources manager at Perfumania, which just laid off 95 employees because it is moving its headquarters to New York's Long Island. "If I started crying, that wouldn't help anybody."

American employers cut 651,000 jobs in February, even more than analysts expected. When the monthly numbers come out, the focus is on the newly unemployed. Less attention is paid to the stress levels of those delivering the news. They want it known they aren't all cold-hearted, script-reading drones who don't care about the people they are cutting loose.

Marty Flaska of Hoist Liftruck in Bedford Park, Ill., was the kind of company owner who befriended his employees. For years, he would joke on the factory floor with the machinists and welders. Now the smile is gone, the small talk rare.

His company, which makes forklifts, has gone from 330 employees six months ago to 79 now. Flaska has personally given pink slips to each laid-off employee, often to people whose children he has seen grow from toddlers to teenagers.

"I had tears in my eyes for months on end," Flaska, 48, said. "Some of these people have worked for me for 16 years, 17 years, 18 years."

Bill Holmes, the human-resources chief for the athletic-shoe manufacturer Reebok in Canton, Mass., said that weeks of preparation precede the day of layoffs. Holmes, 46, said he tries to be mentally and physically ready by eating and sleeping right and getting his exercise. His job, he said, is to make sure that employees know why they are being laid off and what the company is offering in severance and assistance in finding a new job.

"It's a very tricky dynamic," Holmes said. "There's pride for the professionalism with which you do your job. There's profound sadness based upon what it is that you had to do."

During the layoff meeting, Holmes listens to the employee and says he is "firm and clear" about why and how the decision was made. What he doesn't do is utter hollow phrases such as, "I know how you feel."

Reactions from workers include shock, denial, anger and sadness, and Holmes braces himself for the question everyone asks: "Why me?" Mass layoffs of the sort undertaken at Reebok can be easier for employees to take because they seem less personal, he said.

Mahle, 49, the vice president of human resources at Perfumania, said she wakes up in the middle of the night, and has also stopped eating lunch. When she does eat, it is usually something bad for her, like a chocolate bar. She can't relax at home because she is usually working on her laptop computer, or worrying.

"If this were three years ago, I would have said that a lot of these folks were going to have new jobs before their severance package ran out," Mahle said. "But this year, in this economy?"

Employees understand that it has been tough for her, too, Mahle said.

"It's not like I'm being treated like I'm a hatchet lady," she said. "People have actually come up and hugged me. They say, ‘I'm sorry you have to do this.'"

Keeping your job

With almost every industry cutting jobs these days, you're probably asking yourself: Am I next?

CareerBuilder.com, an online job board, offers advice on making yourself "recession-proof" at work -- or at least as much as you can in this economy. The company found that 26 percent of more than 8,000 U.S. workers polled in a recent survey worried about losing their jobs more today than they did a year ago.

CareerBuilder.com suggests these tips so that you can be prepared and take preventive measures:

• Look for additional responsibility. Volunteer to take on different duties and show that you can multitask. Get involved in long-term projects.

• Be a team player. Show that you can work with others by sharing information and resources to benefit the work of colleagues.

• Offer ideas. Suggest proposals that can save your organization money or generate new revenue at a time when companies are trying to do both.

• Toot your own horn. Don't be shy about sharing your accomplishments and contributions to the company. An e-mail updating supervisors of projects or goals can be a good way to share such information. Make sure you also give kudos to others involved in the project.

• Stay positive. Try to remain focused on your work, instead of paying attention to rumors.

THE BALTIMORE SUN