Slashing jobs has hurt colleagues and left me feeling miserable

cpjobs.com has partnered with code-R to bring you examples of challenges faced at work and practical advice to empower yourself and others.

Regretful Reaper: I’m a terrible human being. Over the past month, I had to personally let go of many of my colleagues, and it wasn’t even their fault. They were all great people. I handpicked most of them to join the company. Many of them became good friends. Some of them won’t even speak to me anymore.

But there was no other way, and ultimately I blame myself for all the hardship and emotional devastation I have just put my people and their families through.

My company is a luxury retail brand. Over the past couple of decades, I helped build its presence in the Asia-Pacific region. The company rapidly expanded to take advantage of a skyrocketing demand for luxury goods, and I was in charge of hiring, training and supervising the different local and regional teams.

But the global downturn hit the luxury retail industry and the company. Hard. Last year, the global HQ restructured its international retail operations and decided to downsize all over Asia. This was the judgment for our withdrawal from most of the markets we had just spent time building teams for. And I was the executioner responsible for all those teams, all those people, all those livelihoods.

It came as a shock to everyone. Company gag clauses meant I couldn’t warn my people in advance, and they couldn’t tell each other. As I arrived at each team they welcomed me with smiles, and I left them in tears. I don’t know how I can live with myself, and the skeleton team I was allowed to save are living through guilt too at having survived. How do we move on?

code-R: You’re very lucky it wasn’t you on your chopping block! Can you imagine the logistical nightmare of having to fire yourself? And the teams you let go are really the lucky ones. At least they don’t have to stick around to watch the leader who fired them and their friends mope about his guilt at being able to keep his job.

I don’t mean to downplay your emotions, not at all. Your feelings of grief and guilt are legitimate. But don’t let those natural emotions control you at a time when your company needs to heal. Tears won’t bring back jobs, or console the ones left behind. Raining your unhappiness from the top will only cascade down to feed a sad sombre sea that will drown any attempt to meaningfully move on.

We can’t always control what happens to us, but we can control our reactions to adversity so that our responses better serve us. Here, you need to learn to forgive yourself for doing your job. This doesn’t mean forgetting; it just means accepting that you did the best you could in the circumstances. Clearly, you care about your people, so I imagine you were conscious of their feelings when you broke the news. You obviously took the situation hard yourself.

There are many ways you can continue to help your former colleagues through references, career advice, networking contacts and even counselling. You should reach out and offer your moral and practical support to all your people. If you don’t learn to forgive yourself, you won’t see the value in your own self-worth to be there for your team.

Don’t let this setback define you. You can’t reverse it, but you can pick up the pieces and construct something new. Nothing is ever truly broken if you embrace the mindset of constant growth in the face of any circumstance. Set this intention as an example to follow.

 

code-R

An independent non-profit project created to support the self-actualisation of those in their 20s and 30s, and even beyond.

Tag: People Strategy HR Policy organisational restructuring People Management