Healing the Wounds

Anyone who stays on top of current events is often bombarded with stories about corporate downsizing, layoffs, cutbacks, and restructuring. In today’s society, the frequency and intensity of these phenomena are escalating, leaving virtually no one immune to their effects. Although concern and resources are often directed to the layoff victims, those that must involuntarily leave their employment, often overlooked are the layoff survivors, those who remain in the organization following the layoffs. Unfortunately, the latter group shares many of the emotional and psychological symptoms with their unemployed counterparts, and these ill effects impact both personal and organizational performance.

In Healing the Wounds, David M. Noer explores “layoff survivor sickness,” a set of attitudes and feelings that occur in layoff survivors and negatively affect the productivity of layoff survivors and their organizations.