SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS) -- While the current financial crisis has created an economic depression, it has also created an emotional and psychological depression for workers who have been laid-off and for workers who are left behind.
Let’s face it: one of the worst positions to be in right now is the worker who's been laid off, but some might say that the second worst position to be in are the workers left behind.
“[Workers that are left behind] go through a whole range of emotions. To some degree there’s a sense of loss, just like losing a loved one,” said Mitchell Lee Marks, associate professor of business management at San Francisco State University. “So there’s the depression, the mourning… [and] there is that sense of loss.”
KCBS’ Rebecca Coral reports
Marks says workers left behind also experience a sense of loss of “fair play” because they are unable to logically determine which employees are chosen to stay and which are chosen to go.
“If you have a co-worker and he or she didn’t do their job well… you can rationalize that. …But when you see someone who works across from you get fired because of an economic downturn, and they seemed to work as hard as you do, you can’t rationalize that, and that scares you.”
This heightened emotion of fear and insecurity gives way to a sense of being overworked when a smaller staff is asked to do the job of a larger one. Marks says the strategy to avoid being overwhelmed is to get a head of curve and meet with the boss to discuss and deliberate which priorities need to be met.
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