March 10, 2025 • 51 mins
In this episode of the podcast, Dr. Greg and Bryan explore the significant wave of mass layoffs sweeping across industries, from Southwest Airlines and Chevron to Meta, with a particular focus on the federal workforce, where over 100,000 jobs are at risk. They delve into the psychological toll of job loss, examining the shock, anger, embarrassment, and anxiety experienced by those affected. Bryan shares personal insights on the emotional turmoil that accompanies unexpected layoffs, shedding light on the stigma surrounding job loss and the broader impact on workplace culture. Dr. Greg and Bryan also discuss how layoffs can create a climate of fear, diminishing morale among remaining employees and straining organizational cohesion. The conversation highlights the importance of managerial support, emphasizing active listening and compassionate leadership as essential tools in navigating these challenging transitions. This episode is a must-listen for anyone facing job uncertainty, offering valuable perspectives on resilience, emotional well-being, and the critical role of empathy in the workplace during economic downturns.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Mass layoffs are here, and no one is safe. Southwest
Airlines is slashing seventeen hundred and fifty jobs, Chevron's cutting
a staggering eight thousand employees, and Meida is dropping thirty
six hundred workers. But these numbers pale in comparison to
what's happening in the federal government, where over one hundred
thousand government jobs are on the chopping block. The question
(00:25):
just isn't who's next, it's what's next. Today we're diving
into the psychological fallout for those laid off, for the
survivors still clocking in, and for the managers left to
clean up the mess. Today, On Off the Couch and
welcome to Off the Couch where psychology meets everyday life.
(00:47):
I'm doctor Greg Case on Psychologies, joined by producer Brian Gomez.
Happy and also we have Noah on the board today.
How's it going everyone, Hey, Noah, Noah? Have you ever
been off fired? No? I haven't, actually curb pretty good worker.
I've been fortunate. Oh well, it doesn't always matter if
(01:07):
you're a good worker. A lot of good people are
still laid off and cut from their jobs. But yeah,
well that's a good thing about being young, I will say,
But so we're today, we're going to dive right in.
This is the topic dominating everyone's discussion. Is it's dominating
our news feeds. We're seeing all the stories. This is
constantly coming up. But let's just talk about the federal
(01:29):
workforce layoffs just to begin with. This is from USA today,
So these numbers are bound to continue to climb. But
just as of November twenty twenty four, approximately three million
people were on the federal payroll. Six hundred thousand plus
people work for the US Postal Service, and that's beyond
(01:52):
the three millions, So I mean we have a huge amount. Actually,
the federal government ends up being the largest employer in
the United States States, surpassing Walmart and Amazon. How about
that The Department of Veterans Affairs alone has forty eight thousand,
six hundred employees. The Veterans Health Administration is the largest
(02:14):
sector in the VA. The smallest department. Can you guess
what the smallest department is, Brian? Can you guess what
the smallest one? Oh, you're looking at the graph. You're
not going to be able to figure it out because
the smallest one isn't even up there. What can you
guess you can do a process of deduction for those
listening at home. Are we just put up a graph
(02:35):
on of all the workforces in the federal employment employees?
But what what do you think is the smallest department?
What's the one that's been making all the news that
they think is so evil? It's the Department of Education.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Oh, I'm like, there's so many that only has four.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
It only has four, two hundred and forty five people.
It's actually rather small for considering the sie of you know,
we have schools in the entire United States. We have
three hundred and thirty plus million people. I mean, it's
a we're kind of a big nation. We're very big.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
Is that kind of show why you know, society isn't
as smart because it's such a small department?
Speaker 1 (03:16):
Now, I think there are many other reasons for why
society isn't as smart as it could be, but thinks
it is. That's a whole different discussion. That's a Dunning
Krueger effect, and we'll have to come back to that
another time. That's when people think they're smarter than they
actually are. Okay, so where do federal employees live? Everyone
(03:37):
thinks they live in Washington d C. Actually eighty percent
of federal employees live outside of the Washington d C.
Metro area. Actually, close to about four hundred and fifty
thousand people live in the DC Maryland, Virginia area. That's
the that's the area that feeds the federal government and
the Washington DC area, So that is a lot of people.
(04:00):
But the largest state by federal workforce are can you
guess the largest state in California? It is because it's
the biggest state. It's kind of dumb. It's all the
biggest states have the biggest amount of people. The bigger
the state, the more the federal employees. But when you
look at per capita, it's kind of interesting because California
(04:21):
is really low when you compare it to other states,
like where federal employees are about one percent of Montana's population,
it's only about point three of California's so it's actually
low down there. So it's just kind of cool when
(04:42):
you look at it. Okay, the department's affected by layoffs.
I actually think this is really interesting because the Internal
Revenue Service actually I have six thousand here, but I
think it's now approaching seven thousand layoffs. That they're estimating
for the.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
Irs, So what would that happen with our income taxes?
Speaker 1 (05:02):
And all that ain't going to touch a thing. Ain't
going to mean a thing. What it's going to mean
because they actually need They're going to still go after
the low guy. They're going to still say you owe money,
you owe money, and they're going to still come after
you and send you bills. A lot of that's automated.
But what they won't do is have people to answer
the phones when you have a problem or deal with things.
(05:24):
And what it's also going to mean is they won't
have enough investigators to go after the big cheats. And
the big cheats are the ones who really advocated to
have these the irs cut. So the big cheats are
like the big big you know, people with a lot
of money. This is a regressive type thing because the
(05:45):
Internal Revenue Service is trying to bring in money to
the United States, So it's counterintuitive, but when you know
what they're trying to do is protect wealthy people, it
makes a lot more sense. Department of Defense fifty four
hundred layoffs. I don't know. I guess the world's safer
now suddenly, now that we've joined the access of evil.
(06:07):
I don't know. And then the Department of Homeland Security
has four hundred layoffs and they're always talk squawking about
that one, so I don't It's just kind of interesting.
So we could go down the line. There are actually
a lot of very concerning things, but what I wanted
to do today was to talk about the psychological effects
of being laid off or fired. You've never been laid off?
(06:30):
What about you, Brian?
Speaker 2 (06:31):
I have? And then it's recent too, okay in October for.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
Me, and tell me what did you what did you feel?
Speaker 2 (06:39):
And it's funny because you know how you asked Noah,
and you know, he said he's a great worker. I've
learned that it's not about just being a great worker,
it's just what's happening. The company I worked for, you know,
wasn't making enough money to have like an extra paralegal
on hand, so it was just, you know, it's budget cut,
(07:00):
budget cuts that happen that It's like I was a
US wine and everything too.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
So yeah, that is a very real thing. That is
a very real thing. And you can work at an organization.
I worked at a college where we had layoffs. I'll
talk about that because I was on the other side
of it. I was actually notified by management. Bill. I've
worked at two organizations where I was notified by management beforehand.
They wanted me to be prepared because they have a
layoff coming on X day and this is what they want,
(07:27):
you know, they wanted from other managers to do, you know,
to like to help deal with it. Yeah, and so
you know, it's kind of hard to be on that
side of it because they don't really tell you what
to do. But today I actually found good research about
what to do, so I think that's going to help
a little bit. But I've also been fired. I was
(07:49):
fired from a bookstore and fired from an ice cream store,
so I I could. I had big issues with the
bookstore one because I thought that was a very unfair firing.
In the ice cream store, probably I deserved it.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
Shame on being fired when I was younger too, Like
when you're young, I feel like it's normal, like you know,
And it was from a burger joint, well, two burger joints,
and they were right to fire me as well.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
Yeah, yeah, well the whole thing, I mean, it's just
it's just all very odd. But the bottom line is
that firing does bring on a lot of problems, the
problems with people in these big jobs, though they're much
bigger jobs, and these are career jobs. These are people
who are putting their heart and soul into things. I
was watching a guy from the NOAH. Noah does the
(08:41):
NOAA does National Oceanic I don't know area, I don't
know what the name of the organization, but it's the
bottom line is they do weather. They look at weather,
and they look at oceans. They're like our people that
we depend on to tell us about what's going on
in the world. They're having massive layouts and this guy's
saying it was this whole He wanted to be a
meteorologist since he was eight, and here he is working
(09:05):
in this organization helping predict the weather, helping to look
at natural disasters, and they just cut him off unceremoniously,
saying he didn't meet their needs. And he's like, that
wasn't the case. The case was he was a probationary employee.
And that ends up being they're just basically going for
low hanging fruit who they can fire without any kind
(09:25):
of legal repercussion right now, and they'll probably go after
others later, but immediate emotional reactions when you do get
laid off, shock and disbelief and fired too. Like usually
people are not expecting it. Even when you know if
layoff is coming, you kind of think you won't be
the one. I think that's a very natural human thing.
(09:47):
So shock and disbelief, and actually that shock and disbelief
helps you so you can kind of keep your composures.
You do things like pack up your stuff and be
able to leave and start to deal with things, you know,
whatever you need to do. But that kind of helps
you in that very difficult time. But then you start
to feel anger and resentment that comes usually pretty shortly thereafter.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
Did you feel that, Brian, Yep, yeah, I feel like
you thought it too, Like we saw me deal with
it a little bit, where yeah, it sucks. Nobody wants
to be laid off, and like most people aren't really
prepared to be like just jump into a new job,
especially when it's unexpected, you.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
Know, and there's an economic reality to that. We're not
I'm not going to even talk about economic reality, but
is one of the biggest issues because when we don't
have economic security, almost everything else is hard to do.
When we don't have security, and most people are living
paycheck to paycheck. I would even I'm embarrassed to say,
(10:52):
count myself among them.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
Same I learned if you're listening, save money, get a
savings account.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
Yeah. No, I'm in a better position then, you know,
certainly perhaps you, or certainly the thirty year old self,
or my forty year old self or my fifty year
old self. So I mean, i could say I'm in
a better position, but I've always had that, you know,
kind of just what you need to do, what you
need to do, pay rent, food, car, blah blah blah,
(11:22):
blah blah. So you feel anger and resentment, and that's
that actually ends up being a healthy negative emotion because
what that generally helps people do is to be able
to start to take action. But if they start to
fill with rage, it can go the opposite way and
they start to do things to thwart their previous employer.
(11:42):
And then we talk about going postal. I worry about
that for federal workforce right now. Do you know what
going postal is?
Speaker 2 (11:49):
I was gonna ask you that neither of you know
is an old people term.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
It is an old people term. I can't believe it
I'm so shocked. So going post was back in the day.
There there's a whole bunch of at the time postal
workers who were getting fired or laid off, and some
of them went back and shot up their previous workplace,
(12:15):
so that they started to call it going postal. And
then they had other examples of it from the corporate
world and things, but that term held. They still said
going postal for when people go back in and shoot
up the place or to shoot their previous manager. It's
a bit like a school shooting. Excuse me, where they
go after the previous person.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
That's insane. I had never heard of that. But do
you think that would be something that would happen, because,
I mean, it's happening.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
I don't think it'll happen on a wide basis, but
I do think it has the danger of happening because
they're not doing things in a very helpful way. There
are ways to do it to mitigate damage. So if
you start to get somebody who's psychologically predisposed to blame
others and then doesn't see any kind of normal or
(13:08):
helpful coping mechanism, Sorry, I don't know what's suddenly happening
here that they will start to I feel like that
teacher you had in school who suddenly got a bubble
in her throat and then she was talking, and the
whole class is distracted by that weird tone she has
in her throat. You don't hear a word out of
(13:28):
her mouth, do you know this? Yes? So anyway, that's me.
So I do believe what was I saying? I got
distracted by my own a bubble.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
The postal shooting. Yeah, And you don't think it's gonna happen.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
I don't think it's gonna happen on a wide scale,
But I do think we need to be concerned because
there are people who do have let's say, higher levels
of paranoia and externalization of blame and may not have
good coping mechanisms, so they use let's say, you know,
destroying other as part of their blame. Remember we we
(14:02):
look at anger as someone else did something wrong. They're
they're a bad person for having done it, and they
need to be punished or taught a lesson. That third
one can escalate in quite a big way. Punish her
total lesson could be I'm going to write a bad
letter or put a negative review on glass door, But
(14:24):
it punished her title lesson could escalate to the most
vile for you know, that would be an example of yes,
I wouldn't call that going postal because he wasn't an employee,
but he was someone who's affected. Gotcha, I'm gonna put
in a lozenge, thank you, so I have a better thing, okay. Example,
(14:46):
a high level achiever may struggle with identity after layout,
and that's that's because they also start to feel embarrassment
and shame. So you know, you feel you feel embarrassed
and shaming. Once you stop blaming others, you start to
look at yourself and then you think, is it me?
Am I the bad person? Here? Is it? Is it
(15:07):
how I smell, what I look like, what I do? Well?
Speaker 2 (15:10):
The stigma behind it as well, you know, even how
I wouldn't know it brought it up like it is.
It sounds like, yo, you messed up and they like
fired you for a reason, you know, when we really
know that layoffs aren't like that. But it does affect
you where it's like, what did I do? Like, what
did I mess up so bad that I couldn't you know,
(15:31):
stay on exactly?
Speaker 1 (15:32):
Yeah, And what's the answer. I don't know or you
you look at small things, but in your mind is
all constantly going and back and forth. So we feel
we get filled with all these problems and then you
start to probably feel this psychological stuff, the anxiety and stress.
What's the future hold? Can I get another job? How
(15:53):
am I going to pay these bills? Am I going
to be able to stay in this apartment? How am
I going to pay my kid's child care? It's et cetera.
That starts to really ramp up. And you know, food,
how am I going to feed my kids? Also, depression
and hopelessness, like thinking I've already failed. That's a big
depressive thing. Feeling worthless, helpless, hopeless and hopeless is the
(16:18):
worst one. And even feeling defeated. And when someone feels defeated,
they actually will will stop taking action. It's one of
the worst things they could possibly do. Also, they could
go into an identity crisis because a lot of people,
especially men, look at their job is their identity. And
(16:38):
so you can start to question things and you have
a fear of future failure, which could make you tough
in interviews because you could think, oh no, what if
they don't like me? Blah blah, blah. So, I mean,
there's real damage that comes from being laid off for fired,
but just being laid off. We could keep out fired
because at least then hopefully they get gave you a reason.
(17:01):
But being laid off is almost always because oh sorry,
we just needed to cut and that sucks. So yeah,
safety and self esteem are the two big things that
are impacted, and that just almost always takes away everything,
and then you start to talk to yourself. I must
(17:22):
be a terrible person, I must not be very worthy,
et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
Did you do that, Brian, No, but I did have
my days like that. I did feel defeated. You know,
you're all defeated.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
Probably the worst one.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
Yeah, And luckily it was just it would be every
once in a while, you know. But yeah, I was
pretty surprised with how I reframed everything and kind of
just kept it pushing, kept moving forward, kept trying whatever
I could to keep moving forward, you know, good, which
I thought was weird. Sometimes I'm like, I don't know
(17:58):
where this is even coming from, that I'm having such
a positive, like forward thinking kind of attitude about it. Good,
but I'm grateful for it.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
Good. Now, there are some things we talked less about,
which is actually the effect on other people. People who
start to feel depressed, start to feel anxious, actually don't
feel poor. They're not going to be out there on
the town. They're going to withdraw usually, so they pull
away from other people. They have less social support suddenly,
(18:29):
because a lot of our social support comes from work
and our work friends, but we also don't have money
to go out to the movies or do things or
go out to dinner. It can also cause strained relationships
at home, especially if there's one person who's saying I
need you to pay half the bills, or I need
you to pay all the bills, whatever it is, that
person could start to the relationships can start to fray.
(18:53):
And we saw a lot of that happening when people
would lose factories, especially in the Midwest, and these people
who had these great paying jobs suddenly were laid off
and the best job they could get with something like
a Starbucks or you know, fast food. It became really
(19:13):
tough on relationships and a lot of people then turned
to substance use, which is what a lot of people
don't know is there's a lot of that behind the
opioid crisis. It's not just that they had a physical
injury and were prescribed and opioid. A lot of people
turned to it eventually in these umpoverished areas for different reasons.
(19:37):
So it wasn't just just the pain patients, but the
pain patients were a big part of it, and other
healthy unhealthy coping. I think alcohol is probably the biggest
one of all. Of course pot and then a bunch
of other drugs, but yeah, I would say alcohol probably
are the biggest one of all, always the biggest. Yeah,
(20:01):
so long term effects on mental health, this can be
the biggest one of all. This is probably the most unfortunate.
Is you can have a career paralysis. You could actually
stop like your movements in your track, or start to
really doubt yourself. You can start feeling an imposter syndrome,
like am I really good? Do I really have what
(20:22):
it takes to do whatever thing I'm doing?
Speaker 2 (20:26):
I mean, And that's very like that happens because I
don't know exactly how to explain like the whole job
market right now, because.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
I don't think anyone does.
Speaker 2 (20:36):
Yeah, I mean I have a good resume and like
I can do so much that I was having a
lot of issues with landing anything. And it wasn't me
applying regularly. It was me having friends within companies like
push my resume and everything up to like who needed
to have eyes on it, and still nothing was happening.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
I hear that so much. I hear that from my clients.
I hear it from everyone. I've not heard someone say, oh, yeah,
getting a job is easy. That is not the case,
but usually it would be.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
It used to being yeah that I'm like, I don't
know what's happening in the world exactly. That it's like
it was.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
Well. I think there's a lot of economic anxiety. I
think that accounts for some of it. That a lot
of were a lot of workplaces now now with tariffs,
with the economy sort of unsure, with all these mass
of layoffs, prices soaring, and you know, once we have
big layoffs like this, it's going to have a ripple
effect in the economy. You realize. I saw in the
(21:36):
research triangle Raley Durham, North Carolina, they are losing They're
estimating seventeen thousand jobs lost just from the federal layoffs,
Like just right there, seventeen thousand people may not sound
like a lot in a two city combination that's not
the biggest area. And seventeen thousand people who now no
longer have an income, seventeen thousand people who need a
(21:59):
job and have to go find something. That's a lot
of people, and it's going to have a ripple effect.
Plus it's going to be a big toll on the
state economy because they have to file for unemployment. They
have to get healthcare somehow, maybe it'll come out of Medicaid,
but now that's on the chopping block. So it's it's
(22:20):
almost like the rug is being pulled out. And that's
what's really scary from everyone, from a lot of people,
from the whole nation. It's one thing too because I
lived here in California and we had a big aerospace downturn.
So that's I think it was after the Space Shuttle
and all this stuff. We had, all these we were
(22:41):
really big and aerospace, and all of a sudden we
lost all these jobs and a bunch of stuff happened.
I don't know, I don't know the whole why behind it,
but all of a sudden there was a big downturn,
a real estate tank, there was a bunch of stuff
going on. But if you moved like up north or
to another state, you were gonna be okay, or you
(23:04):
just weathered it out here, which is what most people did.
Of course, it's pretty different when it's happening in the
entire United States. That's what worries me a little bit more.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
Yeah, because I mean, what do you do and from
the government, then what do you really do?
Speaker 1 (23:21):
Then? So career paralysis, imposter syndrome, a loss of motivation,
which again is that defeated feeling, and that's probably one
of the hardest of all. By the way, the biggest
mistake people make with motivation is thinking they need to
feel motivated to take action. You don't. That's what most
(23:43):
in action is tied to a belief that you need
to be motivated. So I can only say is if
you feel unmotivated, don't let that stop you from taking action.
Motivation is just a very helpful little kick. It's sort
of like having caf in the morning to give you
a little more energy. But if you don't have your
(24:04):
caffeine and you have a big old caffeine headache because
you're going through withdraw you can probably still drive to work,
you know. I mean you can still do things.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
Sometimes you have to force yourself.
Speaker 1 (24:18):
Sometimes you have to force yourself you.
Speaker 2 (24:19):
Don't want to, I mean, do whatever you need to
do to take a moment to you know, soothe that
feeling that you're feeling, and then get back up and push.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
Through and then there you stop. You you stop right,
and then they're going to be people. There's a I
hate to go into PTSD here, but sometimes people there
will be people who will have to deal with it.
Everything could be a small amount, but it is a
threaten to their livelihood and maybe their family's livelihood, livelihood,
(24:52):
and if it has a traumatic effect, then it could
possibly do that. I can't say for anyone's individual story
on that. It could also have the opposite effect where
people use that basically that grain of sand to make
a pearl, to use a waster reference. So coping strategies
(25:14):
in psychological resilience one number one. If you're laid off,
acknowledge the emotional impact. I think this is one of
the most important things. Be able to say to yourself
that sucks. I hate that. Don't give yourself platitudes like
if you feel sad, feel sad, if you're angry, feel angry.
(25:34):
Just be what it is. It'll help you to process
the emotion, to reframe the experience. Sometimes it's helpful to
look at that. You know, although you're very upset and disappointed,
maybe the new administration is not a place you want
to be working. Maybe they don't share your same goals.
(25:55):
Maybe you want to do something more aligned with your
goals somewhere else, and it might take some time, but
you want to be able to look at that, Yeah,
as best you can do. Always two, when you're depressed,
set small, small, achievable goals. I almost said unachievable. And
the way is that no achievable, the small little goals.
(26:17):
Every goal that you set, feel like you've.
Speaker 2 (26:20):
Accomplished something, even if it's one thing a day. Honestly, Yeah,
because sometimes you are so defeated that you don't want
to do that one simple thing that you had.
Speaker 1 (26:31):
You know that is true. One thing that can.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
Force yourself to do that one productive thing, it'll help.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
Actually, something I often do with clients is I have
them make their to do list, and sometimes it's got
off along and then I have them take a post
it and write three things on there, and I say
that's your to do list. Do that, do each one
until it's done. Then you're done with that post it.
(26:59):
Then go add three more like to another.
Speaker 2 (27:02):
Post it because I love post it I put them
on my wall all the time. And it's nice because
once I pull it off, it's such a satisfying feeling
to like rip it off and be like it's done.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
You know, And you know who invented post its? Romeo Michelle? Yes,
do you know that?
Speaker 2 (27:19):
Noah, it's no I'm telling you old people stuff.
Speaker 1 (27:23):
Yeah, it's rome And Michelle's what high school reunion? What
is it called?
Speaker 2 (27:27):
Yeah, but I don't know the movie like that. I've
watched it once.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
It is. It is, truly, I say, a work of art.
And it must see because you see two incredibly positive
young women who live by Venice Beach and go to
(27:51):
their high school union and tell everyone they invented post
its and all the fallout goes from there. So anyway, okay,
and then seek social support. Don't disconnect from other people.
Financial planning also, do you know that's a big thing.
(28:12):
I'll stop at that and develop new skills if you
have to, Like if you're working in the coal industry,
I mean, you can keep working in the coal industry,
but see what you can do to develop other energy perhaps.
I mean that's I hate to spe so glib, but
you know, other energy sources maybe, or something where there
(28:32):
might be other jobs. That's not always easy to do.
It's hard to teach an old dog new tricks. Not
always because it's impossible to teach the old dog nutricks
because the old dog kind of gets set in their ways.
Like if you told me I couldn't be a psychologist
and that I had to be something else, A mechanic,
(28:54):
A mechanic, that's great, because I'm terrible.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
You have an electric cars. I don't know.
Speaker 1 (29:00):
I have an electric car. I like it all behind
a black box. So I have an electric car. So yeah,
I would be a bad mechanic and it might be
a really tough slog for me. But if I had
to go to law school, I probably would be okay
with that.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
And maybe it's a good time for people to go
after like a career they've always wanted. Yeah they've never
gone for Yeah that's true.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
Now, that's true. But I think we to do that.
That's a little later down the line. I think what
you have to do with people is to say, first
deal with the emotions, deal with the processing, get your
life in order, and then you can start to reorient yourself.
It's not that other people. We can't just say, oh,
look on the bright side, you know it's gonna take
(29:46):
a little bit. Let's talk about the effects of an
organization of mass layoffs. I like this because and I
really wanted to go into this because a lot of
people think the organization is better off for laying off people.
That is not the case. It's really sometimes organizations have
to lay off people because otherwise the whole organization would fold.
(30:08):
And sometimes they do it just because they want to
do it to, you know, increase their bottom line. Sometimes
it's it's kind of haphazard, like we're seeing in the
federal government. Looks pretty haphazard. Doesn't look like there's any plan.
It looks like it's just like you know that chainsaw,
like you saw El Muscu's on stage. It looks like
(30:29):
that is pretty much the plan. But I could be wrong.
I just have never been given any information to refute that. Okay,
So there's an immediate financial and operational impact. There is
a cost savings generally because you're not paying people and
people are the you know, usually that's the biggest expense,
(30:50):
but there could be severance in legal costs. Some people
will start to bring it to court, so you start
to have to go into court, and that costs a
lot more money than paying them. You might have to
pay them back pay plus plus plus, and there's a
but people don't realize there's often a disruption in the workflow,
like whatever's happening will start will either stop happening, or
(31:11):
it'll really cause other problems. Like when Twitter had layoffs,
they had increased workloads and tons of technical failures. Do
you remember when they had those technical You couldn't even
use Twitter there for a bit. It was such a
it was non functional. Well it's kind of half non
functional now, but now it's just you know, it's like
(31:33):
going on It's like going to a once really cool
resort and finding out it's been graffited and taken over
by the natives or something. I mean, that sounds awful,
isn't it. He was trying to be you know that
sometimes things can fall into disrepair, so effects on remaining
(31:55):
employees or survivor syndrome guilt. Survivors feel bad for the
laid off employees and they do. I remember being on
that side of it, being on the survivor syndrome, and
it had a profound effect on the entire organization I
was with. Like people talked about it, they felt bad
about it. That was one of the biggest things. Also,
(32:18):
increased stress and burnout. There was more work on fewer people.
That was a big thing. Also, job in security and fears.
Once you see that happening, you see people getting marched out,
you know that your job really isn't safe. Maybe that's
part of the plan, but that job in security actually
makes you start to worry about working there and had
(32:40):
me at least looking for another job.
Speaker 2 (32:43):
Well yeah, it shows that the company doesn't really care
about their employees as much and they can just discard
them whenever they feel like it.
Speaker 1 (32:49):
Well, I just I think if you're going to do it,
you got to do it a particular way, you know,
like the Wicked Witch said with Dorothy's shoes, these things
must be done delicately. So also a loss of trust
in leadership. You start to think that they're not telling
you the truth always and it erodes morale. There is
(33:12):
a way to deal with that for managers. Stay Tuned
made his layoffs actually led to distrust and low morale
and a lot of people I don't know who's left
made up, but we've had a lot of public examples
of people who've worked there, who are you saying very
negative things about the organization. There's been a there'll be
(33:36):
a decline in productivity. Often after a layoff, there's lower
employee engagement, like you don't want to do things like
if you stayed, would you want to do stuff? No?
Speaker 2 (33:48):
I mean sometimes the people that get laid off are
the fun ones, and then now we're just super.
Speaker 1 (33:53):
Boring the fun ones. Well what I mean? Yeah, Well,
possibly also the brain drain, you know, I mean not
having people who have institutional knowledge. One thing I learned
when I worked at a very large organization that had
like employees from day one of this organization I've been
around about twenty plus years at that point, is that
(34:19):
is that there were employees who had so much knowledge.
They weren't the top employees, but they were some of
the most valuable employees. So they actually when I could
go to those people and say, how does this what
happened here? And dah da dah, that institutional knowledge ended
up being a really helpful thing for me. Also, fear
(34:43):
stifles creativity. But do you guess what, when you're fearful,
you don't want to take risks. Duh. So when you
have a fearful organization, people aren't going to want to
do it. IBM did this. You guys don't know IBM.
They were like IBM used to be like the I
don't know who's the big tech person today Google, Like
(35:03):
you know, they were like the Google of the time.
They were hot, hot hot, They were the Apple, they
were the Microsoft. IBM was this company. It was early
early computers. They had layoffs in the nineteen nineties. They
lost a lot of their top engineers and their innovation
completely slowed, and that that company went from being on
(35:25):
top to just kind of going in to relegated to
kind of the back of the line. I mean, we
still have IBM, but it's just wherever it is.
Speaker 2 (35:34):
I've seen them do stuff with fashion no, yeah, like
and some fashion designs like yeah, they work together with
fashion designers, but other than that, I don't really know.
Speaker 1 (35:44):
Well, good for them, I'm glad they're taking a new
tech also could have a negative cultural and brand impact.
Toxic workplace culture could develop there could be reputational damage,
is what I think about the federal workforce. A lot
of people take those jobs. They don't pay as much
as private So you take those jobs because you Number one,
you want to do something to give back. Number two,
(36:07):
because you want job security, which these jobs used to have.
We used to think of federal jobs as pretty secure,
like among the securest jobs. I would say I would
have said that six months ago. I would have absolutely
said that. Also, they have great retirement benefits, so these
people know that they'll be able to work, give back
(36:28):
to the country that they believe in, and be able
to retire and have these lives. And now now that
question is out the window. So loss of customer trust too.
There's been so much brand damage to the federal government,
this constant maligning saying how bad they are, with people
(36:49):
who are usually saying it don't usually know what they do.
Did you have a negative employee of I mean a
negative view of the federal government, Brian.
Speaker 2 (37:01):
More like, I understand how it works.
Speaker 1 (37:05):
Well, you worked in one of the branches, Yeah, which
was you worked in the military.
Speaker 2 (37:11):
Yeah, And I just you know, it has its quirks.
Speaker 1 (37:15):
I would say, well, it's a huge behemoth, and there
are many parts of the organization, but in general it works.
It just may not always work great, and there's super
part parts of it. That's what's so weird about this.
They could have done things right. Clinton did this right.
They got all the organizations they I think I have
(37:35):
a graph about the about the workforce, and it's kind
of held about the same number across time. We see
a dip in that in the nineties because Bill Clinton's
administration with Al Gore, they actually step forward to cut
a lot of the federal workforce. And when they cut
(37:56):
is when they the organization went down. But they didn't
cut like they're doing now. They cut by going in
and doing assessments and talking to the managers and doing
plans and doing hiring freezes, all kind of the normal
things you do. And eventually there's attrition and eventually you
cut where you can and you start to really reduce
(38:18):
the federal workforce. So now you know, we've even though
our population has grown, we've kept the workforce pretty much
the same across time, except during years of the census
when we do higher extra people. But in general, it's
it's been okay. In Google and twenty twenty three had
(38:39):
layoffs that led to an employee backlash and criticism. Employees
did not like that Google used to be like a
cool place to work.
Speaker 2 (38:48):
Yeah. I think Target got a lot of backlash lately.
People are telling people just not to shop at time.
Speaker 1 (38:54):
Well, I don't think they're doing it for layoffs. They're
doing it for the DEI Yeah, but still Target. Yeah,
And everyone's like, you know what you gotta love? You
know who you gotta love is Warren Buffett. Warren Buffet,
do you guys know who he is? He's He's the
like billionaire investor. He is one of the great minds
(39:15):
of investing. He's kind of pulling out of the market
right now, which is really interesting and it's kind of
worrying a lot of people, like what does he see?
Like is the market starting to you know, he's starting
to pull a lot of cash reserves. But the other
thing that's very interesting about him he loves two companies
quite a bit. One is not Target. It's guess what
(39:35):
what company are you told to shop at besides Target.
Speaker 2 (39:38):
Instead of Targeting?
Speaker 1 (39:39):
Yeah, he loves Costco And he said they have a
great organization and they treat their employees well. And he
looks at good organizations. The other one he loves American Express.
He probably loves quite a few more. But those are
two major organizations that do have DEI that are standing
(40:00):
up to this. And it's interesting that they're also financially
the better off organizations. You can't be fickleed with this stuff,
you know, So it's kind of interesting. I'm not a
financial person. I just find it interesting. I'm just that's me.
So you could have a weekend competitive edge, essentially and
have trouble rehiring. I mean, who's going to want to
(40:23):
what good persons? If you offered two jobs, do you
take the job with the federal government where you might
be laid off when the next administration comes in, or
do you take the job in the private sector where
you also could be laid off, but it's not going
to be willy nilly as much.
Speaker 2 (40:38):
Yeah, and if they've laid off people before it, you know,
it's like I would rather go to the safer option.
Speaker 1 (40:44):
Microsoft had layoffs in the early two thousands, and that
slowed its ability to compete with Google and Apple and Microsoft.
Not that they've been catching up, but they kind of have.
I mean, they're kind of just not the They were
the first big micro computer, but it you know, now
we look at other places a lot. I think Microsoft's
(41:06):
still good. I still like them. I have a friend, though,
who's talking about an effect. So there's the organizational effects,
which we talked about. We talked about the personal effects.
But I have a friend who has a contract with NIH,
and she's talking. But she's a scientist at UCLA, and
she this morning wrote me a text. She was kind
(41:29):
of talking about how she's so worried about this. I know,
if you could put the first quote up there, I'm
going to read. The thing that's top of mine now
is the prospect of having to close our labs in IH,
which is the National Institute's of Health, has stopped reviewing
grants and has stopped approving new ones, and we won't
(41:51):
have funds to pay our staff if this goes on
too long. We're taking it day by day, trying not
to project too much into the future. But this is
top of mind. She's a scientist, and she's a scientist.
She has a big lab, she has other scientists, she
has grad students, She pays workers who you know, won
some at the front desk. But this is I wish
(42:14):
I could tell you her project. I don't feel like
it would be right. But she's doing extremely important work
on a disease that is fatal and there they've made
huge advances. So this is some of the most important
and it specifically deals with children. So this would be,
(42:38):
if you got it into the public more perhaps a
little more popular, because these are children who you know
are really dealing with a fatal illness. But it is
also something that you know, again, this willing nilly approach
is not really concerned with. She also goes on to
say something the public doesn't appreciate is how difficult and
(43:04):
expensive it is to develop any drug. Most drugs fail
because of unanticipated things like toxicities or off target effects,
so the consequence of stalled research and development won't be
felt for years. It is almost impossible to regain momentum
once the research is stopped. The effect on medicine is
(43:26):
going to be huge.
Speaker 2 (43:29):
That's scary.
Speaker 1 (43:30):
And this is just a personal communication. She didn't know
I'd put these quotes in. I'll have to tell her later,
but I thought they were extremely important statements coming from
someone who really knows.
Speaker 2 (43:45):
And do you think anything is going to get better
anytime soon? No, got it.
Speaker 1 (43:50):
I don't know. Maybe it will. I be thrilled. I'm
rooting for things to get better, but I'm not seeing
any signs on the horizon. But I'm always surprised that
some people just are so hopeful. I saw a great
I love economy because economy is psychology and practice. And
what this economist was saying on something I was on
(44:13):
Peers Morgan, why do I watch that? I don't know?
Does I have a mc gluttony glutton? But he said
this guy economists, British economists, really smart, said they go,
what's the one thing to do to make things better?
And he said, tax work less, tax wealth more. Now,
if you know the ins and out, that's as pithy
(44:37):
as it comes, and that's succinct, but it also calls
into we tax workers a huge amount and people who
are wealthy get tax at a much lower amount. But
he's saying tax work less, tax wealth more. Well, the
person that was there to counteract him said, no, that's
not possible. What are you saying? And that just kind
of went into a tizzy but had no facts. It
(45:00):
just kind of went into a tizzy. So it kind
of made me think there's there are always people for
another side, even if something is very easy, like there
is an easy solution, but people who have wealth are
funding the government. One of them bought basically the last
election and is now there with a chainsaw. How organizations.
Speaker 2 (45:23):
Yes, No, I'm just saying because it's crazy. You see
that there's so much stuff that we all could do
to better our world, but there's people always fighting against.
Speaker 1 (45:31):
That we could Noah, what could we do to better
our world? Do you know I've got no ideas.
Speaker 2 (45:38):
I'm just an intern.
Speaker 1 (45:42):
Well, you your cycle. That's what being an intern is.
You know. We have to we want to listen to
your ideas. How organizations can mitigate negative effects, transparent communications.
I'm going to go into that. Give support for laid
off employees not being done at the federal level, support
for remaining employees, build trust in the culture, and have
strategic workforce planning. You've got to care about everyone, both
(46:06):
the ones you let go and the ones you're keeping on.
So to transition a big reduction, there's actually research down.
I'll just do it real quickly. Penn State did a
great research study. They found the active listening by managers.
Penn State by the way Great Great University. They found
active listening by managers can improve employees' sense of control
(46:31):
and anxiety. The study was conducted only with large corporations
experiencing layoffs, so perhaps not immediately applied to the federal workforce,
but what's the difference. There's still organizations. Let's go into
active listening really quickly. Active listening involves three elements attention, comprehension,
and acceptance. Attention is engaged body language, like you're sitting
(46:54):
looking at them, making eye contact with them. That's attention.
Comprehension is re hate. Comprehension is restating concerns. A good,
easy quick note, all you need to do is repeat
their words back to them. You don't even need to
rephrase it. If they say I hate coming to work
(47:17):
because there's no parking, Oh, you hate coming to work
because there's no parking, I'm sorry to hear that. Like
that's good. That can be as that as simple as
it needs to be. And also acceptance. Be open to
employees' viewpoints. Don't argue with them they hate coming to
work because there's no parking, find out what's going on
(47:38):
that Those three steps can really make a huge difference.
Employees will feel more valued and supportive when actively listen
to You don't even have to solve the problem if
they believe that you understand the problem. I do believe
that that sometimes people win elections because the other people
(47:59):
feel under nderstood even though the solutions didn't match. There
you go so and Plub's employees feel in control. They
feel a safe space, and it shows employees that hard
work is still valued despite layoffs. And managers need to
(48:20):
also and observe their own reactions during these uncertain times.
They're people too, They are dealing with things, and they're
usually being told what to do. Layoffs usually don't come
from the managers, they come from higher ups. A shift
in listening quality sends a signal, a strong signal to
employees that you care and managers can support workers even
(48:42):
when layoffs are beyond their control. Most of the time
they are so final thoughts the mindset shift. Successful people
have faced job loss. It happens over and over again.
I used to have a cartoon on my refriger at
home that I used for inspiration because I faced a
(49:03):
lot of difficulty, and it was basically this little cartoon
of this guy getting up after he got tripped, and
it said success is not measured by by how many
times you fall down, but by how many times you
get back up again. And I was like, oh my god,
that's great. The key shift is from why did this
(49:27):
happen to me? To how can I use this to
grow that there's usually a little bit of a journey
to get there.
Speaker 2 (49:36):
Yeah, I mean I was pretty happy in the big
picture of it from getting laid off, like I was miserable.
So for me, I'm like, oh, it's for a reason,
Like I'm gonna go into a better right, you know.
Speaker 1 (49:52):
Right on. I love that. But if you are experiencing
a layoff and you're still experiencing a lot of crisis,
there is the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline that just dial
nine to eight eight if you're in the United States,
three little numbers nine to eight eight. It's a twenty
four hour per day, seven day a week, free and
confidential crisis helpline for mental health support. Or you can
(50:14):
go to nine eight eight lifeline dot org to chat
with the counselor, or text nine eight eight if you cannot.
You know, you don't know how to operate a computer
or a telephone I'm kidding, but some people prefer texting, Oh,
thank you, Noah, you you put the graphic of nine
eight eight up. I really appreciate that, but that brings
(50:37):
us to the end of the show for today. A
reminder to like, subscribe give us five stars. Links to
the studies go to the YouTube page YouTube dot com
forward slash Doctor Greg. Also, if you have questions and topics,
hit us up at ask Doctor Greg. This is doctor Greg,
Brian and Noah saying farewell. Be until next time, be present,
(51:00):
be flexible, and be kind.
Mass layoffs are here, and no one is safe. Southwest
Airlines is slashing seventeen hundred and fifty jobs, Chevron's cutting
a staggering eight thousand employees, and Meida is dropping thirty
six hundred workers. But these numbers pale in comparison to
what's happening in the federal government, where over one hundred
thousand government jobs are on the chopping block. The question
(00:25):
just isn't who's next, it's what's next. Today we're diving
into the psychological fallout for those laid off, for the
survivors still clocking in, and for the managers left to
clean up the mess. Today, On Off the Couch and
welcome to Off the Couch where psychology meets everyday life.
(00:47):
I'm doctor Greg Case on Psychologies, joined by producer Brian Gomez.
Happy and also we have Noah on the board today.
How's it going everyone, Hey, Noah, Noah? Have you ever
been off fired? No? I haven't, actually curb pretty good worker.
I've been fortunate. Oh well, it doesn't always matter if
(01:07):
you're a good worker. A lot of good people are
still laid off and cut from their jobs. But yeah,
well that's a good thing about being young, I will say,
But so we're today, we're going to dive right in.
This is the topic dominating everyone's discussion. Is it's dominating
our news feeds. We're seeing all the stories. This is
constantly coming up. But let's just talk about the federal
(01:29):
workforce layoffs just to begin with. This is from USA today,
So these numbers are bound to continue to climb. But
just as of November twenty twenty four, approximately three million
people were on the federal payroll. Six hundred thousand plus
people work for the US Postal Service, and that's beyond
(01:52):
the three millions, So I mean we have a huge amount. Actually,
the federal government ends up being the largest employer in
the United States States, surpassing Walmart and Amazon. How about
that The Department of Veterans Affairs alone has forty eight thousand,
six hundred employees. The Veterans Health Administration is the largest
(02:14):
sector in the VA. The smallest department. Can you guess
what the smallest department is, Brian? Can you guess what
the smallest one? Oh, you're looking at the graph. You're
not going to be able to figure it out because
the smallest one isn't even up there. What can you
guess you can do a process of deduction for those
listening at home. Are we just put up a graph
(02:35):
on of all the workforces in the federal employment employees?
But what what do you think is the smallest department?
What's the one that's been making all the news that
they think is so evil? It's the Department of Education.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Oh, I'm like, there's so many that only has four.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
It only has four, two hundred and forty five people.
It's actually rather small for considering the sie of you know,
we have schools in the entire United States. We have
three hundred and thirty plus million people. I mean, it's
a we're kind of a big nation. We're very big.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
Is that kind of show why you know, society isn't
as smart because it's such a small department?
Speaker 1 (03:16):
Now, I think there are many other reasons for why
society isn't as smart as it could be, but thinks
it is. That's a whole different discussion. That's a Dunning
Krueger effect, and we'll have to come back to that
another time. That's when people think they're smarter than they
actually are. Okay, so where do federal employees live? Everyone
(03:37):
thinks they live in Washington d C. Actually eighty percent
of federal employees live outside of the Washington d C.
Metro area. Actually, close to about four hundred and fifty
thousand people live in the DC Maryland, Virginia area. That's
the that's the area that feeds the federal government and
the Washington DC area, So that is a lot of people.
(04:00):
But the largest state by federal workforce are can you
guess the largest state in California? It is because it's
the biggest state. It's kind of dumb. It's all the
biggest states have the biggest amount of people. The bigger
the state, the more the federal employees. But when you
look at per capita, it's kind of interesting because California
(04:21):
is really low when you compare it to other states,
like where federal employees are about one percent of Montana's population,
it's only about point three of California's so it's actually
low down there. So it's just kind of cool when
(04:42):
you look at it. Okay, the department's affected by layoffs.
I actually think this is really interesting because the Internal
Revenue Service actually I have six thousand here, but I
think it's now approaching seven thousand layoffs. That they're estimating
for the.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
Irs, So what would that happen with our income taxes?
Speaker 1 (05:02):
And all that ain't going to touch a thing. Ain't
going to mean a thing. What it's going to mean
because they actually need They're going to still go after
the low guy. They're going to still say you owe money,
you owe money, and they're going to still come after
you and send you bills. A lot of that's automated.
But what they won't do is have people to answer
the phones when you have a problem or deal with things.
(05:24):
And what it's also going to mean is they won't
have enough investigators to go after the big cheats. And
the big cheats are the ones who really advocated to
have these the irs cut. So the big cheats are
like the big big you know, people with a lot
of money. This is a regressive type thing because the
(05:45):
Internal Revenue Service is trying to bring in money to
the United States, So it's counterintuitive, but when you know
what they're trying to do is protect wealthy people, it
makes a lot more sense. Department of Defense fifty four
hundred layoffs. I don't know. I guess the world's safer
now suddenly, now that we've joined the access of evil.
(06:07):
I don't know. And then the Department of Homeland Security
has four hundred layoffs and they're always talk squawking about
that one, so I don't It's just kind of interesting.
So we could go down the line. There are actually
a lot of very concerning things, but what I wanted
to do today was to talk about the psychological effects
of being laid off or fired. You've never been laid off?
(06:30):
What about you, Brian?
Speaker 2 (06:31):
I have? And then it's recent too, okay in October for.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
Me, and tell me what did you what did you feel?
Speaker 2 (06:39):
And it's funny because you know how you asked Noah,
and you know, he said he's a great worker. I've
learned that it's not about just being a great worker,
it's just what's happening. The company I worked for, you know,
wasn't making enough money to have like an extra paralegal
on hand, so it was just, you know, it's budget cut,
(07:00):
budget cuts that happen that It's like I was a
US wine and everything too.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
So yeah, that is a very real thing. That is
a very real thing. And you can work at an organization.
I worked at a college where we had layoffs. I'll
talk about that because I was on the other side
of it. I was actually notified by management. Bill. I've
worked at two organizations where I was notified by management beforehand.
They wanted me to be prepared because they have a
layoff coming on X day and this is what they want,
(07:27):
you know, they wanted from other managers to do, you know,
to like to help deal with it. Yeah, and so
you know, it's kind of hard to be on that
side of it because they don't really tell you what
to do. But today I actually found good research about
what to do, so I think that's going to help
a little bit. But I've also been fired. I was
(07:49):
fired from a bookstore and fired from an ice cream store,
so I I could. I had big issues with the
bookstore one because I thought that was a very unfair firing.
In the ice cream store, probably I deserved it.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
Shame on being fired when I was younger too, Like
when you're young, I feel like it's normal, like you know,
And it was from a burger joint, well, two burger joints,
and they were right to fire me as well.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
Yeah, yeah, well the whole thing, I mean, it's just
it's just all very odd. But the bottom line is
that firing does bring on a lot of problems, the
problems with people in these big jobs, though they're much
bigger jobs, and these are career jobs. These are people
who are putting their heart and soul into things. I
was watching a guy from the NOAH. Noah does the
(08:41):
NOAA does National Oceanic I don't know area, I don't
know what the name of the organization, but it's the
bottom line is they do weather. They look at weather,
and they look at oceans. They're like our people that
we depend on to tell us about what's going on
in the world. They're having massive layouts and this guy's
saying it was this whole He wanted to be a
meteorologist since he was eight, and here he is working
(09:05):
in this organization helping predict the weather, helping to look
at natural disasters, and they just cut him off unceremoniously,
saying he didn't meet their needs. And he's like, that
wasn't the case. The case was he was a probationary employee.
And that ends up being they're just basically going for
low hanging fruit who they can fire without any kind
(09:25):
of legal repercussion right now, and they'll probably go after
others later, but immediate emotional reactions when you do get
laid off, shock and disbelief and fired too. Like usually
people are not expecting it. Even when you know if
layoff is coming, you kind of think you won't be
the one. I think that's a very natural human thing.
(09:47):
So shock and disbelief, and actually that shock and disbelief
helps you so you can kind of keep your composures.
You do things like pack up your stuff and be
able to leave and start to deal with things, you know,
whatever you need to do. But that kind of helps
you in that very difficult time. But then you start
to feel anger and resentment that comes usually pretty shortly thereafter.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
Did you feel that, Brian, Yep, yeah, I feel like
you thought it too, Like we saw me deal with
it a little bit, where yeah, it sucks. Nobody wants
to be laid off, and like most people aren't really
prepared to be like just jump into a new job,
especially when it's unexpected, you.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
Know, and there's an economic reality to that. We're not
I'm not going to even talk about economic reality, but
is one of the biggest issues because when we don't
have economic security, almost everything else is hard to do.
When we don't have security, and most people are living
paycheck to paycheck. I would even I'm embarrassed to say,
(10:52):
count myself among them.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
Same I learned if you're listening, save money, get a
savings account.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
Yeah. No, I'm in a better position then, you know,
certainly perhaps you, or certainly the thirty year old self,
or my forty year old self or my fifty year
old self. So I mean, i could say I'm in
a better position, but I've always had that, you know,
kind of just what you need to do, what you
need to do, pay rent, food, car, blah blah blah,
(11:22):
blah blah. So you feel anger and resentment, and that's
that actually ends up being a healthy negative emotion because
what that generally helps people do is to be able
to start to take action. But if they start to
fill with rage, it can go the opposite way and
they start to do things to thwart their previous employer.
(11:42):
And then we talk about going postal. I worry about
that for federal workforce right now. Do you know what
going postal is?
Speaker 2 (11:49):
I was gonna ask you that neither of you know
is an old people term.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
It is an old people term. I can't believe it
I'm so shocked. So going post was back in the day.
There there's a whole bunch of at the time postal
workers who were getting fired or laid off, and some
of them went back and shot up their previous workplace,
(12:15):
so that they started to call it going postal. And
then they had other examples of it from the corporate
world and things, but that term held. They still said
going postal for when people go back in and shoot
up the place or to shoot their previous manager. It's
a bit like a school shooting. Excuse me, where they
go after the previous person.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
That's insane. I had never heard of that. But do
you think that would be something that would happen, because,
I mean, it's happening.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
I don't think it'll happen on a wide basis, but
I do think it has the danger of happening because
they're not doing things in a very helpful way. There
are ways to do it to mitigate damage. So if
you start to get somebody who's psychologically predisposed to blame
others and then doesn't see any kind of normal or
(13:08):
helpful coping mechanism, Sorry, I don't know what's suddenly happening
here that they will start to I feel like that
teacher you had in school who suddenly got a bubble
in her throat and then she was talking, and the
whole class is distracted by that weird tone she has
in her throat. You don't hear a word out of
(13:28):
her mouth, do you know this? Yes? So anyway, that's me.
So I do believe what was I saying? I got
distracted by my own a bubble.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
The postal shooting. Yeah, And you don't think it's gonna happen.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
I don't think it's gonna happen on a wide scale,
But I do think we need to be concerned because
there are people who do have let's say, higher levels
of paranoia and externalization of blame and may not have
good coping mechanisms, so they use let's say, you know,
destroying other as part of their blame. Remember we we
(14:02):
look at anger as someone else did something wrong. They're
they're a bad person for having done it, and they
need to be punished or taught a lesson. That third
one can escalate in quite a big way. Punish her
total lesson could be I'm going to write a bad
letter or put a negative review on glass door, But
(14:24):
it punished her title lesson could escalate to the most
vile for you know, that would be an example of yes,
I wouldn't call that going postal because he wasn't an employee,
but he was someone who's affected. Gotcha, I'm gonna put
in a lozenge, thank you, so I have a better thing, okay. Example,
(14:46):
a high level achiever may struggle with identity after layout,
and that's that's because they also start to feel embarrassment
and shame. So you know, you feel you feel embarrassed
and shaming. Once you stop blaming others, you start to
look at yourself and then you think, is it me?
Am I the bad person? Here? Is it? Is it
(15:07):
how I smell, what I look like, what I do? Well?
Speaker 2 (15:10):
The stigma behind it as well, you know, even how
I wouldn't know it brought it up like it is.
It sounds like, yo, you messed up and they like
fired you for a reason, you know, when we really
know that layoffs aren't like that. But it does affect
you where it's like, what did I do? Like, what
did I mess up so bad that I couldn't you know,
(15:31):
stay on exactly?
Speaker 1 (15:32):
Yeah, And what's the answer. I don't know or you
you look at small things, but in your mind is
all constantly going and back and forth. So we feel
we get filled with all these problems and then you
start to probably feel this psychological stuff, the anxiety and stress.
What's the future hold? Can I get another job? How
(15:53):
am I going to pay these bills? Am I going
to be able to stay in this apartment? How am
I going to pay my kid's child care? It's et cetera.
That starts to really ramp up. And you know, food,
how am I going to feed my kids? Also, depression
and hopelessness, like thinking I've already failed. That's a big
depressive thing. Feeling worthless, helpless, hopeless and hopeless is the
(16:18):
worst one. And even feeling defeated. And when someone feels defeated,
they actually will will stop taking action. It's one of
the worst things they could possibly do. Also, they could
go into an identity crisis because a lot of people,
especially men, look at their job is their identity. And
(16:38):
so you can start to question things and you have
a fear of future failure, which could make you tough
in interviews because you could think, oh no, what if
they don't like me? Blah blah, blah. So, I mean,
there's real damage that comes from being laid off for fired,
but just being laid off. We could keep out fired
because at least then hopefully they get gave you a reason.
(17:01):
But being laid off is almost always because oh sorry,
we just needed to cut and that sucks. So yeah,
safety and self esteem are the two big things that
are impacted, and that just almost always takes away everything,
and then you start to talk to yourself. I must
(17:22):
be a terrible person, I must not be very worthy,
et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
Did you do that, Brian, No, but I did have
my days like that. I did feel defeated. You know,
you're all defeated.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
Probably the worst one.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
Yeah, And luckily it was just it would be every
once in a while, you know. But yeah, I was
pretty surprised with how I reframed everything and kind of
just kept it pushing, kept moving forward, kept trying whatever
I could to keep moving forward, you know, good, which
I thought was weird. Sometimes I'm like, I don't know
(17:58):
where this is even coming from, that I'm having such
a positive, like forward thinking kind of attitude about it. Good,
but I'm grateful for it.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
Good. Now, there are some things we talked less about,
which is actually the effect on other people. People who
start to feel depressed, start to feel anxious, actually don't
feel poor. They're not going to be out there on
the town. They're going to withdraw usually, so they pull
away from other people. They have less social support suddenly,
(18:29):
because a lot of our social support comes from work
and our work friends, but we also don't have money
to go out to the movies or do things or
go out to dinner. It can also cause strained relationships
at home, especially if there's one person who's saying I
need you to pay half the bills, or I need
you to pay all the bills, whatever it is, that
person could start to the relationships can start to fray.
(18:53):
And we saw a lot of that happening when people
would lose factories, especially in the Midwest, and these people
who had these great paying jobs suddenly were laid off
and the best job they could get with something like
a Starbucks or you know, fast food. It became really
(19:13):
tough on relationships and a lot of people then turned
to substance use, which is what a lot of people
don't know is there's a lot of that behind the
opioid crisis. It's not just that they had a physical
injury and were prescribed and opioid. A lot of people
turned to it eventually in these umpoverished areas for different reasons.
(19:37):
So it wasn't just just the pain patients, but the
pain patients were a big part of it, and other
healthy unhealthy coping. I think alcohol is probably the biggest
one of all. Of course pot and then a bunch
of other drugs, but yeah, I would say alcohol probably
are the biggest one of all, always the biggest. Yeah,
(20:01):
so long term effects on mental health, this can be
the biggest one of all. This is probably the most unfortunate.
Is you can have a career paralysis. You could actually
stop like your movements in your track, or start to
really doubt yourself. You can start feeling an imposter syndrome,
like am I really good? Do I really have what
(20:22):
it takes to do whatever thing I'm doing?
Speaker 2 (20:26):
I mean, And that's very like that happens because I
don't know exactly how to explain like the whole job
market right now, because.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
I don't think anyone does.
Speaker 2 (20:36):
Yeah, I mean I have a good resume and like
I can do so much that I was having a
lot of issues with landing anything. And it wasn't me
applying regularly. It was me having friends within companies like
push my resume and everything up to like who needed
to have eyes on it, and still nothing was happening.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
I hear that so much. I hear that from my clients.
I hear it from everyone. I've not heard someone say, oh, yeah,
getting a job is easy. That is not the case,
but usually it would be.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
It used to being yeah that I'm like, I don't
know what's happening in the world exactly. That it's like
it was.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
Well. I think there's a lot of economic anxiety. I
think that accounts for some of it. That a lot
of were a lot of workplaces now now with tariffs,
with the economy sort of unsure, with all these mass
of layoffs, prices soaring, and you know, once we have
big layoffs like this, it's going to have a ripple
effect in the economy. You realize. I saw in the
(21:36):
research triangle Raley Durham, North Carolina, they are losing They're
estimating seventeen thousand jobs lost just from the federal layoffs,
Like just right there, seventeen thousand people may not sound
like a lot in a two city combination that's not
the biggest area. And seventeen thousand people who now no
longer have an income, seventeen thousand people who need a
(21:59):
job and have to go find something. That's a lot
of people, and it's going to have a ripple effect.
Plus it's going to be a big toll on the
state economy because they have to file for unemployment. They
have to get healthcare somehow, maybe it'll come out of Medicaid,
but now that's on the chopping block. So it's it's
(22:20):
almost like the rug is being pulled out. And that's
what's really scary from everyone, from a lot of people,
from the whole nation. It's one thing too because I
lived here in California and we had a big aerospace downturn.
So that's I think it was after the Space Shuttle
and all this stuff. We had, all these we were
(22:41):
really big and aerospace, and all of a sudden we
lost all these jobs and a bunch of stuff happened.
I don't know, I don't know the whole why behind it,
but all of a sudden there was a big downturn,
a real estate tank, there was a bunch of stuff
going on. But if you moved like up north or
to another state, you were gonna be okay, or you
(23:04):
just weathered it out here, which is what most people did.
Of course, it's pretty different when it's happening in the
entire United States. That's what worries me a little bit more.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
Yeah, because I mean, what do you do and from
the government, then what do you really do?
Speaker 1 (23:21):
Then? So career paralysis, imposter syndrome, a loss of motivation,
which again is that defeated feeling, and that's probably one
of the hardest of all. By the way, the biggest
mistake people make with motivation is thinking they need to
feel motivated to take action. You don't. That's what most
(23:43):
in action is tied to a belief that you need
to be motivated. So I can only say is if
you feel unmotivated, don't let that stop you from taking action.
Motivation is just a very helpful little kick. It's sort
of like having caf in the morning to give you
a little more energy. But if you don't have your
(24:04):
caffeine and you have a big old caffeine headache because
you're going through withdraw you can probably still drive to work,
you know. I mean you can still do things.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
Sometimes you have to force yourself.
Speaker 1 (24:18):
Sometimes you have to force yourself you.
Speaker 2 (24:19):
Don't want to, I mean, do whatever you need to
do to take a moment to you know, soothe that
feeling that you're feeling, and then get back up and push.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
Through and then there you stop. You you stop right,
and then they're going to be people. There's a I
hate to go into PTSD here, but sometimes people there
will be people who will have to deal with it.
Everything could be a small amount, but it is a
threaten to their livelihood and maybe their family's livelihood, livelihood,
(24:52):
and if it has a traumatic effect, then it could
possibly do that. I can't say for anyone's individual story
on that. It could also have the opposite effect where
people use that basically that grain of sand to make
a pearl, to use a waster reference. So coping strategies
(25:14):
in psychological resilience one number one. If you're laid off,
acknowledge the emotional impact. I think this is one of
the most important things. Be able to say to yourself
that sucks. I hate that. Don't give yourself platitudes like
if you feel sad, feel sad, if you're angry, feel angry.
(25:34):
Just be what it is. It'll help you to process
the emotion, to reframe the experience. Sometimes it's helpful to
look at that. You know, although you're very upset and disappointed,
maybe the new administration is not a place you want
to be working. Maybe they don't share your same goals.
(25:55):
Maybe you want to do something more aligned with your
goals somewhere else, and it might take some time, but
you want to be able to look at that, Yeah,
as best you can do. Always two, when you're depressed,
set small, small, achievable goals. I almost said unachievable. And
the way is that no achievable, the small little goals.
(26:17):
Every goal that you set, feel like you've.
Speaker 2 (26:20):
Accomplished something, even if it's one thing a day. Honestly, Yeah,
because sometimes you are so defeated that you don't want
to do that one simple thing that you had.
Speaker 1 (26:31):
You know that is true. One thing that can.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
Force yourself to do that one productive thing, it'll help.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
Actually, something I often do with clients is I have
them make their to do list, and sometimes it's got
off along and then I have them take a post
it and write three things on there, and I say
that's your to do list. Do that, do each one
until it's done. Then you're done with that post it.
(26:59):
Then go add three more like to another.
Speaker 2 (27:02):
Post it because I love post it I put them
on my wall all the time. And it's nice because
once I pull it off, it's such a satisfying feeling
to like rip it off and be like it's done.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
You know, And you know who invented post its? Romeo Michelle? Yes,
do you know that?
Speaker 2 (27:19):
Noah, it's no I'm telling you old people stuff.
Speaker 1 (27:23):
Yeah, it's rome And Michelle's what high school reunion? What
is it called?
Speaker 2 (27:27):
Yeah, but I don't know the movie like that. I've
watched it once.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
It is. It is, truly, I say, a work of art.
And it must see because you see two incredibly positive
young women who live by Venice Beach and go to
(27:51):
their high school union and tell everyone they invented post
its and all the fallout goes from there. So anyway, okay,
and then seek social support. Don't disconnect from other people.
Financial planning also, do you know that's a big thing.
(28:12):
I'll stop at that and develop new skills if you
have to, Like if you're working in the coal industry,
I mean, you can keep working in the coal industry,
but see what you can do to develop other energy perhaps.
I mean that's I hate to spe so glib, but
you know, other energy sources maybe, or something where there
(28:32):
might be other jobs. That's not always easy to do.
It's hard to teach an old dog new tricks. Not
always because it's impossible to teach the old dog nutricks
because the old dog kind of gets set in their ways.
Like if you told me I couldn't be a psychologist
and that I had to be something else, A mechanic,
(28:54):
A mechanic, that's great, because I'm terrible.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
You have an electric cars. I don't know.
Speaker 1 (29:00):
I have an electric car. I like it all behind
a black box. So I have an electric car. So yeah,
I would be a bad mechanic and it might be
a really tough slog for me. But if I had
to go to law school, I probably would be okay
with that.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
And maybe it's a good time for people to go
after like a career they've always wanted. Yeah they've never
gone for Yeah that's true.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
Now, that's true. But I think we to do that.
That's a little later down the line. I think what
you have to do with people is to say, first
deal with the emotions, deal with the processing, get your
life in order, and then you can start to reorient yourself.
It's not that other people. We can't just say, oh,
look on the bright side, you know it's gonna take
(29:46):
a little bit. Let's talk about the effects of an
organization of mass layoffs. I like this because and I
really wanted to go into this because a lot of
people think the organization is better off for laying off people.
That is not the case. It's really sometimes organizations have
to lay off people because otherwise the whole organization would fold.
(30:08):
And sometimes they do it just because they want to
do it to, you know, increase their bottom line. Sometimes
it's it's kind of haphazard, like we're seeing in the
federal government. Looks pretty haphazard. Doesn't look like there's any plan.
It looks like it's just like you know that chainsaw,
like you saw El Muscu's on stage. It looks like
(30:29):
that is pretty much the plan. But I could be wrong.
I just have never been given any information to refute that. Okay,
So there's an immediate financial and operational impact. There is
a cost savings generally because you're not paying people and
people are the you know, usually that's the biggest expense,
(30:50):
but there could be severance in legal costs. Some people
will start to bring it to court, so you start
to have to go into court, and that costs a
lot more money than paying them. You might have to
pay them back pay plus plus plus, and there's a
but people don't realize there's often a disruption in the workflow,
like whatever's happening will start will either stop happening, or
(31:11):
it'll really cause other problems. Like when Twitter had layoffs,
they had increased workloads and tons of technical failures. Do
you remember when they had those technical You couldn't even
use Twitter there for a bit. It was such a
it was non functional. Well it's kind of half non
functional now, but now it's just you know, it's like
(31:33):
going on It's like going to a once really cool
resort and finding out it's been graffited and taken over
by the natives or something. I mean, that sounds awful,
isn't it. He was trying to be you know that
sometimes things can fall into disrepair, so effects on remaining
(31:55):
employees or survivor syndrome guilt. Survivors feel bad for the
laid off employees and they do. I remember being on
that side of it, being on the survivor syndrome, and
it had a profound effect on the entire organization I
was with. Like people talked about it, they felt bad
about it. That was one of the biggest things. Also,
(32:18):
increased stress and burnout. There was more work on fewer people.
That was a big thing. Also, job in security and fears.
Once you see that happening, you see people getting marched out,
you know that your job really isn't safe. Maybe that's
part of the plan, but that job in security actually
makes you start to worry about working there and had
(32:40):
me at least looking for another job.
Speaker 2 (32:43):
Well yeah, it shows that the company doesn't really care
about their employees as much and they can just discard
them whenever they feel like it.
Speaker 1 (32:49):
Well, I just I think if you're going to do it,
you got to do it a particular way, you know,
like the Wicked Witch said with Dorothy's shoes, these things
must be done delicately. So also a loss of trust
in leadership. You start to think that they're not telling
you the truth always and it erodes morale. There is
(33:12):
a way to deal with that for managers. Stay Tuned
made his layoffs actually led to distrust and low morale
and a lot of people I don't know who's left
made up, but we've had a lot of public examples
of people who've worked there, who are you saying very
negative things about the organization. There's been a there'll be
(33:36):
a decline in productivity. Often after a layoff, there's lower
employee engagement, like you don't want to do things like
if you stayed, would you want to do stuff? No?
Speaker 2 (33:48):
I mean sometimes the people that get laid off are
the fun ones, and then now we're just super.
Speaker 1 (33:53):
Boring the fun ones. Well what I mean? Yeah, Well,
possibly also the brain drain, you know, I mean not
having people who have institutional knowledge. One thing I learned
when I worked at a very large organization that had
like employees from day one of this organization I've been
around about twenty plus years at that point, is that
(34:19):
is that there were employees who had so much knowledge.
They weren't the top employees, but they were some of
the most valuable employees. So they actually when I could
go to those people and say, how does this what
happened here? And dah da dah, that institutional knowledge ended
up being a really helpful thing for me. Also, fear
(34:43):
stifles creativity. But do you guess what, when you're fearful,
you don't want to take risks. Duh. So when you
have a fearful organization, people aren't going to want to
do it. IBM did this. You guys don't know IBM.
They were like IBM used to be like the I
don't know who's the big tech person today Google, Like
(35:03):
you know, they were like the Google of the time.
They were hot, hot hot, They were the Apple, they
were the Microsoft. IBM was this company. It was early
early computers. They had layoffs in the nineteen nineties. They
lost a lot of their top engineers and their innovation
completely slowed, and that that company went from being on
(35:25):
top to just kind of going in to relegated to
kind of the back of the line. I mean, we
still have IBM, but it's just wherever it is.
Speaker 2 (35:34):
I've seen them do stuff with fashion no, yeah, like
and some fashion designs like yeah, they work together with
fashion designers, but other than that, I don't really know.
Speaker 1 (35:44):
Well, good for them, I'm glad they're taking a new
tech also could have a negative cultural and brand impact.
Toxic workplace culture could develop there could be reputational damage,
is what I think about the federal workforce. A lot
of people take those jobs. They don't pay as much
as private So you take those jobs because you Number one,
you want to do something to give back. Number two,
(36:07):
because you want job security, which these jobs used to have.
We used to think of federal jobs as pretty secure,
like among the securest jobs. I would say I would
have said that six months ago. I would have absolutely
said that. Also, they have great retirement benefits, so these
people know that they'll be able to work, give back
(36:28):
to the country that they believe in, and be able
to retire and have these lives. And now now that
question is out the window. So loss of customer trust too.
There's been so much brand damage to the federal government,
this constant maligning saying how bad they are, with people
(36:49):
who are usually saying it don't usually know what they do.
Did you have a negative employee of I mean a
negative view of the federal government, Brian.
Speaker 2 (37:01):
More like, I understand how it works.
Speaker 1 (37:05):
Well, you worked in one of the branches, Yeah, which
was you worked in the military.
Speaker 2 (37:11):
Yeah, And I just you know, it has its quirks.
Speaker 1 (37:15):
I would say, well, it's a huge behemoth, and there
are many parts of the organization, but in general it works.
It just may not always work great, and there's super
part parts of it. That's what's so weird about this.
They could have done things right. Clinton did this right.
They got all the organizations they I think I have
(37:35):
a graph about the about the workforce, and it's kind
of held about the same number across time. We see
a dip in that in the nineties because Bill Clinton's
administration with Al Gore, they actually step forward to cut
a lot of the federal workforce. And when they cut
(37:56):
is when they the organization went down. But they didn't
cut like they're doing now. They cut by going in
and doing assessments and talking to the managers and doing
plans and doing hiring freezes, all kind of the normal
things you do. And eventually there's attrition and eventually you
cut where you can and you start to really reduce
(38:18):
the federal workforce. So now you know, we've even though
our population has grown, we've kept the workforce pretty much
the same across time, except during years of the census
when we do higher extra people. But in general, it's
it's been okay. In Google and twenty twenty three had
(38:39):
layoffs that led to an employee backlash and criticism. Employees
did not like that Google used to be like a
cool place to work.
Speaker 2 (38:48):
Yeah. I think Target got a lot of backlash lately.
People are telling people just not to shop at time.
Speaker 1 (38:54):
Well, I don't think they're doing it for layoffs. They're
doing it for the DEI Yeah, but still Target. Yeah,
And everyone's like, you know what you gotta love? You
know who you gotta love is Warren Buffett. Warren Buffet,
do you guys know who he is? He's He's the
like billionaire investor. He is one of the great minds
(39:15):
of investing. He's kind of pulling out of the market
right now, which is really interesting and it's kind of
worrying a lot of people, like what does he see?
Like is the market starting to you know, he's starting
to pull a lot of cash reserves. But the other
thing that's very interesting about him he loves two companies
quite a bit. One is not Target. It's guess what
(39:35):
what company are you told to shop at besides Target.
Speaker 2 (39:38):
Instead of Targeting?
Speaker 1 (39:39):
Yeah, he loves Costco And he said they have a
great organization and they treat their employees well. And he
looks at good organizations. The other one he loves American Express.
He probably loves quite a few more. But those are
two major organizations that do have DEI that are standing
(40:00):
up to this. And it's interesting that they're also financially
the better off organizations. You can't be fickleed with this stuff,
you know, So it's kind of interesting. I'm not a
financial person. I just find it interesting. I'm just that's me.
So you could have a weekend competitive edge, essentially and
have trouble rehiring. I mean, who's going to want to
(40:23):
what good persons? If you offered two jobs, do you
take the job with the federal government where you might
be laid off when the next administration comes in, or
do you take the job in the private sector where
you also could be laid off, but it's not going
to be willy nilly as much.
Speaker 2 (40:38):
Yeah, and if they've laid off people before it, you know,
it's like I would rather go to the safer option.
Speaker 1 (40:44):
Microsoft had layoffs in the early two thousands, and that
slowed its ability to compete with Google and Apple and Microsoft.
Not that they've been catching up, but they kind of have.
I mean, they're kind of just not the They were
the first big micro computer, but it you know, now
we look at other places a lot. I think Microsoft's
(41:06):
still good. I still like them. I have a friend, though,
who's talking about an effect. So there's the organizational effects,
which we talked about. We talked about the personal effects.
But I have a friend who has a contract with NIH,
and she's talking. But she's a scientist at UCLA, and
she this morning wrote me a text. She was kind
(41:29):
of talking about how she's so worried about this. I know,
if you could put the first quote up there, I'm
going to read. The thing that's top of mine now
is the prospect of having to close our labs in IH,
which is the National Institute's of Health, has stopped reviewing
grants and has stopped approving new ones, and we won't
(41:51):
have funds to pay our staff if this goes on
too long. We're taking it day by day, trying not
to project too much into the future. But this is
top of mind. She's a scientist, and she's a scientist.
She has a big lab, she has other scientists, she
has grad students, She pays workers who you know, won
some at the front desk. But this is I wish
(42:14):
I could tell you her project. I don't feel like
it would be right. But she's doing extremely important work
on a disease that is fatal and there they've made
huge advances. So this is some of the most important
and it specifically deals with children. So this would be,
(42:38):
if you got it into the public more perhaps a
little more popular, because these are children who you know
are really dealing with a fatal illness. But it is
also something that you know, again, this willing nilly approach
is not really concerned with. She also goes on to
say something the public doesn't appreciate is how difficult and
(43:04):
expensive it is to develop any drug. Most drugs fail
because of unanticipated things like toxicities or off target effects,
so the consequence of stalled research and development won't be
felt for years. It is almost impossible to regain momentum
once the research is stopped. The effect on medicine is
(43:26):
going to be huge.
Speaker 2 (43:29):
That's scary.
Speaker 1 (43:30):
And this is just a personal communication. She didn't know
I'd put these quotes in. I'll have to tell her later,
but I thought they were extremely important statements coming from
someone who really knows.
Speaker 2 (43:45):
And do you think anything is going to get better
anytime soon? No, got it.
Speaker 1 (43:50):
I don't know. Maybe it will. I be thrilled. I'm
rooting for things to get better, but I'm not seeing
any signs on the horizon. But I'm always surprised that
some people just are so hopeful. I saw a great
I love economy because economy is psychology and practice. And
what this economist was saying on something I was on
(44:13):
Peers Morgan, why do I watch that? I don't know?
Does I have a mc gluttony glutton? But he said
this guy economists, British economists, really smart, said they go,
what's the one thing to do to make things better?
And he said, tax work less, tax wealth more. Now,
if you know the ins and out, that's as pithy
(44:37):
as it comes, and that's succinct, but it also calls
into we tax workers a huge amount and people who
are wealthy get tax at a much lower amount. But
he's saying tax work less, tax wealth more. Well, the
person that was there to counteract him said, no, that's
not possible. What are you saying? And that just kind
of went into a tizzy but had no facts. It
(45:00):
just kind of went into a tizzy. So it kind
of made me think there's there are always people for
another side, even if something is very easy, like there
is an easy solution, but people who have wealth are
funding the government. One of them bought basically the last
election and is now there with a chainsaw. How organizations.
Speaker 2 (45:23):
Yes, No, I'm just saying because it's crazy. You see
that there's so much stuff that we all could do
to better our world, but there's people always fighting against.
Speaker 1 (45:31):
That we could Noah, what could we do to better
our world? Do you know I've got no ideas.
Speaker 2 (45:38):
I'm just an intern.
Speaker 1 (45:42):
Well, you your cycle. That's what being an intern is.
You know. We have to we want to listen to
your ideas. How organizations can mitigate negative effects, transparent communications.
I'm going to go into that. Give support for laid
off employees not being done at the federal level, support
for remaining employees, build trust in the culture, and have
strategic workforce planning. You've got to care about everyone, both
(46:06):
the ones you let go and the ones you're keeping on.
So to transition a big reduction, there's actually research down.
I'll just do it real quickly. Penn State did a
great research study. They found the active listening by managers.
Penn State by the way Great Great University. They found
active listening by managers can improve employees' sense of control
(46:31):
and anxiety. The study was conducted only with large corporations
experiencing layoffs, so perhaps not immediately applied to the federal workforce,
but what's the difference. There's still organizations. Let's go into
active listening really quickly. Active listening involves three elements attention, comprehension,
and acceptance. Attention is engaged body language, like you're sitting
(46:54):
looking at them, making eye contact with them. That's attention.
Comprehension is re hate. Comprehension is restating concerns. A good,
easy quick note, all you need to do is repeat
their words back to them. You don't even need to
rephrase it. If they say I hate coming to work
(47:17):
because there's no parking, Oh, you hate coming to work
because there's no parking, I'm sorry to hear that. Like
that's good. That can be as that as simple as
it needs to be. And also acceptance. Be open to
employees' viewpoints. Don't argue with them they hate coming to
work because there's no parking, find out what's going on
(47:38):
that Those three steps can really make a huge difference.
Employees will feel more valued and supportive when actively listen
to You don't even have to solve the problem if
they believe that you understand the problem. I do believe
that that sometimes people win elections because the other people
(47:59):
feel under nderstood even though the solutions didn't match. There
you go so and Plub's employees feel in control. They
feel a safe space, and it shows employees that hard
work is still valued despite layoffs. And managers need to
(48:20):
also and observe their own reactions during these uncertain times.
They're people too, They are dealing with things, and they're
usually being told what to do. Layoffs usually don't come
from the managers, they come from higher ups. A shift
in listening quality sends a signal, a strong signal to
employees that you care and managers can support workers even
(48:42):
when layoffs are beyond their control. Most of the time
they are so final thoughts the mindset shift. Successful people
have faced job loss. It happens over and over again.
I used to have a cartoon on my refriger at
home that I used for inspiration because I faced a
(49:03):
lot of difficulty, and it was basically this little cartoon
of this guy getting up after he got tripped, and
it said success is not measured by by how many
times you fall down, but by how many times you
get back up again. And I was like, oh my god,
that's great. The key shift is from why did this
(49:27):
happen to me? To how can I use this to
grow that there's usually a little bit of a journey
to get there.
Speaker 2 (49:36):
Yeah, I mean I was pretty happy in the big
picture of it from getting laid off, like I was miserable.
So for me, I'm like, oh, it's for a reason,
Like I'm gonna go into a better right, you know.
Speaker 1 (49:52):
Right on. I love that. But if you are experiencing
a layoff and you're still experiencing a lot of crisis,
there is the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline that just dial
nine to eight eight if you're in the United States,
three little numbers nine to eight eight. It's a twenty
four hour per day, seven day a week, free and
confidential crisis helpline for mental health support. Or you can
(50:14):
go to nine eight eight lifeline dot org to chat
with the counselor, or text nine eight eight if you cannot.
You know, you don't know how to operate a computer
or a telephone I'm kidding, but some people prefer texting, Oh,
thank you, Noah, you you put the graphic of nine
eight eight up. I really appreciate that, but that brings
(50:37):
us to the end of the show for today. A
reminder to like, subscribe give us five stars. Links to
the studies go to the YouTube page YouTube dot com
forward slash Doctor Greg. Also, if you have questions and topics,
hit us up at ask Doctor Greg. This is doctor Greg,
Brian and Noah saying farewell. Be until next time, be present,
(51:00):
be flexible, and be kind.
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