Coping with mass layoffs: going on when the job is gone

Companies and psychologists can help workers develop the skills to cope with the challenges of mass redundancies.

Workers can develop the skills to move on from job loss, Gabrielle Kelly says. Picture: Kelly Barnes.

When the automotive industry winds down at the end of next year, leaving up to 200,000 workers from Holden, Ford and Toyota and the associated supply chain without jobs, Gabrielle Kelly is hoping many of them will have become skilled in resilience to help them move forward.

Kelly, director of the Wellbeing and Resilience Centre at the South Australian Health & Medical Research Institute, has been working with companies in the supply chain to build resilience among the workforce as they prepare to close their doors.

She says the centre considered what the workforce would need when faced with mass redundancies and, other than help with resumes, the key was improving psychological health.

“If you think about the value chain of this work, psychological wellbeing goes at the beginning,” Kelly says. “We need people with a growth mindset who can meet the challenges on the chin and not be defeated by it.

“These skills are about building the capacity to withstand and thrive through these challenges, and I believe there’s capability to teach some of these skills to their families as well.”

The centre works with a program developed by TechWerks that is used by the US Army to develop resilience in soldiers before they undertake tours of duty to avoid negative behaviours such as domestic violence, drug and alcohol abuse, depression and suicide on return.

Kelly says it involves training 26 staff from two companies on 10 important resilience skills that they can take back to their staff.

Key features include teaching people about cultivating gratitude and mindfulness, along with interpersonal problem solving and changing cognitive behaviour.

“There’s clear evidence that if people become more appreciative about what they have in their life, rather than what they don’t have, they become more resilient,” she says. “It’s giving them the skills to be more positive about the challenges they’re facing because challenges are not new.

“We challenge them to think in a new direction.”

Since working with several companies last year, Kelly says, there has been a 12 per cent improvement in wellbeing and resilience and a 25 per cent decrease in performance management issues and trouble. She says younger workers and Australian-born employees have been found to worry more about their career prospects.

But she says it is time to act on car manufacturing immediately to ensure people are capable of coping with their job loss because they are likelier to get a job within six months if they do not mope around.

The Career Consultancy director Catherine Cunningham says career transition programs need to ensure there is an effective and rigorous process of self-assessment, job-search strategy and networking skills before jobs are lost.

Part of Cunningham’s program uses the Kubler-Ross grief cycle, which identifies stages of emotional loss former employees may experience.

“There is no doubt it is the biggest blow in your professional life so it can sometimes take a year before a person will fully recover,” Cunningham says.

“The program helps clients find the value that they bring to the marketplace, and through that they regain confidence.”

The emotional and economic stress of job loss can affect families and if individuals are unable to pull themselves out of the grief cycle they can become bitter and carry that for the rest of their lives.

Cunningham says multinationals generally understand the value of helping former employees move to new careers, and programs often are included in enterprise agreements. But program availability depends on how much support an organisation decides to offer former employees.

“It generally depends on seniority; the more senior you are the more the support the organisation will give,” she says. “It’s a status thing; they tend to give executives more than they give junior people. It’s recognising that you’ve given a lot of value to the company, we want to respect you and give you a decent program.”

Cunningham says reorienting and finding work for those involved in mass redundancy is a boon for communities. However, there are wider implications for regions where people cannot find jobs, including flow-on effects to local businesses when people have less disposable income, and for retail outlets near centres with mass redundancies, such as Adelaide’s northern suburbs where Holden is preparing to close.

Nationally, more than 2000 mining industry jobs have been lost in recent months; the threat of unemployment hangs over workers when Stradbroke Island sandmining ceases by the end of 2019 and the potential closure of miner and steelworks Arrium, axing 5000 jobs across the country.

Holden’s closure next year will mean 3000 Victorian and South Australian workers will be laid off, with an estimated auto industry flow-on effect of up to 200,000 positions. Petroleum giant BP has dropped up to 1000 Australian jobs in the past year; in May electronic retailer Dick Smith shut its stores, resulting in 2500 job losses.

Another 640 jobs will go from Adelaide’s ASC shipyards by the end of next year. With thousands of jobs losses inevitable, Cunningham says it is important for companies and psychologists helping workers make the transition to redundancy to consider using the Kubler-Ross grief cycle to help people recognise their value and regain confidence.

She says it can take a year for people to recover from redundancy. “If they don’t drag themselves up the other side of the grief cycle, they can become bitter, have a chip on their shoulder and carry that for the rest of their lives,” Cunningham says. “And the flow-on effect from that is their families and people around them suffer.”

The South Australian Health & Medical Research Institute will host its Positive Psychology and Wellbeing Conference in September. Speakers include University of Cambridge Wellbeing Institute director Felicia Huppert and Flinders University strategic professor of psychiatry Julio Licinio.