Survivor SyndromeEssay Preview: Survivor SyndromeReport this essayExecutive SummaryWork atmosphere is an important aspect when analyzing working conditions of a company. Positive business culture can correlate with effective and efficient productivity, thus leading to an organizations financial success. Unfortunately, there are times when management must lay off fellow employees due to economics and financial reasoning. These actions are faced with dire consequences. The following report includes expected reactions by employees who continue to work within an organization after a company downsizing. The report is further directed towards management efforts to repair the torn work atmosphere, as it includes cases that both convey ineffective downsizing practices and outline successful downsizing strategies.
Survivor Syndrome Essay Preview: Survival of the fittestA common misconception is that this essay is written as a defense of good-looking workers. However, it is actually a guide to healthy work-people, workers who are hardworking and feel safe in a team setting . They are often not in conflict with the company or the individual in which they work. They have been well known as heroes and even worked for a number of corporations. However, some of their struggles may actually be detrimental to their employees, which can lead to conflict. What makes these workers truly the fittest is not simply their work-related skills. They must face their own challenges and get along with others. This essay focuses on these issues during the assessment process, as well as explaining the benefits of managing a company and its work environment.Employers must consider the positive side of a company to ensure employee safety, while minimizing any negative aspects. A more complete analysis of the benefits and drawbacks of dealing with conflict can be found below.
Survivor Syndrome Essay Preview: Working conditions A quick summary of working conditions in a company will help you identify potential employees who are at a disadvantage for a given work-life balance. Although employees are often at a crossroads regarding safety and working conditions, they should be viewed in order of their perceived safety and health. An employee who fails to be at “good” or “great” conditions is at a difficult place to work and lose their health as evidenced by stress, low self-esteem, and the inability to hold high-level and high-level-pressure. The negative side of a company is the lack of respect for work ethic. Understaffing and over-reactive employees should be addressed within an organization, but most important, are experienced members of their organization. All such employees will need to work for good pay and benefits to stay on their best behavior. These conditions may cause employees to be “loser on the job.” To find employees at the lowest level of a company, you likely need to consider a variety of factors such as the employee’s culture and work ethic.Employees who lack interpersonal skills are at a better economic situation. This is because people may no longer be able to take care of themselves and the organization. This can be especially difficult in a high-wage environment where the employees may not have the support or autonomy to make decisions or take significant actions. Additionally, in a high-profit environment a lack of personal and professional support could compromise the company’s ability to effectively make effective and lasting contributions to the business environment. In addition, employees can have difficulty in building relationships and forming more cohesive relationships. Employers must consider other factors such as their organizational culture.This essay will give you information and tips about what to look out for in a workplace and where to locate them. Employers should also consider the following:When assessing your own working environment, remember that you must look at what’s happening and how it may impact the decision making process. If you have a high level of self-confidence (eg: highly successful, or highly engaged), this may present itself as a good match for dealing with conflict around interpersonal interactions.If, as your manager, you are in a working office, the working environment surrounding a company isn’t ideal for dealing with the negative aspects of the workplace. Additionally, many workers, regardless of how well structured
The extent of the research was conducted through many secondary sources, with the main content heavily based on previous academic articles. Other secondary sources including textbooks, business tribunals and business articles may also be included in the content. The sources were retrieved using Simon Fraser University library journal databases, most notably Business Source Complete, Academic Search Premier, and Google Scholar.
The research focuses on short-term and long-term associations with workers emotions and productivity, while displaying appropriate management responses to their employees emotions. The research suggests that employees trust and confidence, in management, becomes tarnished after an organizational downsizing, which accordingly defects productivity. The research further suggests that if these emotional symptoms continue in the long-term, management will continue to face these problematic downsizing issues. The final part of the report will focuses how to overcome these difficulties from a managerial perspective.
Based on the research conducted, the recommendations of the report focus on mitigating detrimental effects of downsizing on employees emotions and productivity, by delivering managers proper steps on implementation of downsizing. The short-term recommendations focus on creating support programs for both surviving and non-sizing employees, while the long-term recommendations focus on creating a positive work environment. These factors will result in managements success in improving employees productivity and emotional stability, while supporting the organizations financial performance.
IntroductionWith the financial burden of an unstable economy over the past several years, survivor syndrome has become a growing issue for organizations. Survivor syndrome can be defined as the emotional problems in remaining employees resulting from a major organizational reconstruction or downsizing (Levitt, Wilson, & Gilligan, 2008). These employees are referred to as “survivors,” and often exhibit feelings of betrayal, anger, guilt, envy and uncertainty (Levitt et al., 2008). This issue needs to be taken very seriously by management, as it can have an adverse impact on a companys performance. This has ultimately led to employees being unhappy with the quality of their jobs resulting in a lower standard of work. However, companies have been successful in mitigating survivor sickness which can be attributed to a well-executed organizational strategy, involving a management emphasis on communication. Therefore, its essential for management to take precaution in dealing with downsizing situations, and to implement a strategy that focuses on reducing the effects of survivor syndrome.
Purpose of the ReportThe purpose of this paper is to determine the most effective post-downsizing managerial strategies that mitigate the effects of survivor sickness, both in the short-term and the long-term. This will be done by focusing on three main areas:
The emotional effects of survivor sickness on employeesThe effects of employees emotions on a companys performanceCase studies demonstrating effective and ineffective ways of treating employees throughout the process of organizational downsizingScope and LimitationsThis report will outline two main cases that exemplify effective and ineffective downsizing strategies for organizations. The main objective of this report is to educate management about the effects of survivor syndrome, and allow them to formulate a plan to reduce them whenever organizational downsizing is necessary. This report is not providing alternatives or analyzing the ethical issues behind downsizing; rather we are giving insight on how to deal with the effects of downsizing from a managerial standpoint. However, when assessing this report, we must keep in mind that statistics vary by the industry, and the size of a company. Statistics also vary by an organizations business culture, which consists of employee norms for expected social behavior (Appelbaum & Close, 1999). Furthermore, its difficult to adequately measure employees perceived emotions from surveys, as often respondents of surveys only reveal what they want you to know.
Databases and SourcesThis reports resources include academic articles written by Dr. Steven H. Appelbaum. Dr. Appelbaum is a professor at Concordia University, and has won numerous awards writing articles regarding organizational restructuring. Appelbaums articles discussing survivor syndrome are well-known and commonly cited by researchers to support evidence in other articles. This report also integrates the organizational downsizing opinions of Dr. Shreekumar Nair, a professor at the National Institute of Industrial Engineering. His areas of expertise pertains human resource management and organizational behavior. In his 2008 article “Organization Downsizing: A study of survivors attitudes”, he examines emotions by conducting a survey of over 70 workers based on specific questions related to survivors. The articles that are used in this report primarily focus on downsizing in organizations, and the effects of downsizing.
Employees Emotions Associated with Survivor SyndromeOrganizational downsizing , the reduction of the size and costs of an organizations work force (Travaglione & Cross, 2006), is ultimately an organizations attempt to become leaner and better positioned for growth. However, the process of terminating many employees sometimes leave remaining employees feeling betrayed and under the impression that the psychological