What is Layoff Survivor Sickness?
Job losses have an impact on individuals still employed by the company in terms of their emotions, minds, and organizations. Researchers see workplace survivor sickness, which refers to consequences experienced by people who “survive” the layoff strategy, as a result of downsizing and reorganization.
Like with any traumatic incident, survivors encounter a variety of negative side effects, including decreased productivity, a lack of faith in organizational dedication and leadership, unfavorable attitudes, and increased work-life balance difficulties.
The following are some of the negative consequences that a person with workplace survivor syndrome could encounter, according to a report by the Institute for Employment Studies (IES):
- Loss of confidence in the upper management of the company
- Frustration at the layoff procedure
- Guilt for continuing to work when others lose
- Fear of becoming “next” to be fired
- Resentment about having to do more labor
7 Ways to Overcome the Layoff Survivor Sickness
Stress from a layoff affects everyone in a business, not just the people who are being fired but due to their need to assemble teams with fewer individuals, managers are also under pressure. The event is stressful for HR leaders and upper management is concerned that the decision might come back to bite them.
Nonetheless, the “survival group,” or those that avoided being laid off, is one of the most difficult groups to be a part of.
Workers who were not permitted to leave during the event may experience remorse, worry, and general malaise for some time after it has ended. This condition is known as “layoff survivor sickness,” Managing it can be challenging. So in this article, we talk about what is layoff survivor sickness and how to overcome it.