Healing the Wounds: Overcoming the Trauma of Layoffs and Revitalizing Downsized Organizations

4.17. Sense of Permanent Change

There was a widespread sense of permanent and sudden change, and this sense resulted in stress, resignation, and fear:

• "I've gone through a pretty significant change over the last ten months. Last March, I stood before my group and told them that we were sitting with twenty-six people, and that by the end of the year, we would be at no more than fifteen. That was probably the toughest thing I've had to do since I've been with the company. I've been here over twenty-one years. There is a lot of distrust now. It's like all the work I've done and all the work they did in the past is for nothing." (manager)

• "The whole organization is 50 percent of what it was. One of the more stressful things is the fact that a lot ...