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Your #Career : 4 Ways to Protect Yourself From a #Layoff …Whether because of #Mergers, #Downsizing, or Organizational Shifts, each Year, Countless Workers Inevitably Find Themselves Losing their #Jobs Through No Fault of their Own.

February 15, 2018/in First Sun Blog/by First Sun Team

Whether because of mergers, downsizing, or organizational shifts, each year, countless workers inevitably find themselves losing their jobs through no fault of their own.

It happens to the most seasoned and dedicated among us, and that’s perhaps the scariest thing about getting laid off — no one is immune. That said, there are certain steps you can take to minimize your chances of getting laid off, and reduce your anxiety along the way.

1. Have a unique skill

Though soft skills — those that apply to virtually any position — are always a good thing to work on, at the end of the day, you’re probably not going to get to keep your job in a round of layoffs by virtue of your solid time-management ability alone. That’s why it pays to work on honing one particular skill you know your company absolutely needs. If you’re an IT professional, maybe it’s a complex software that’s needed to keep the workflow going. If you’re a designer, maybe it’s that cutting-edge graphics program that’s been giving your company its competitive edge. No matter what skill you’re best suited to focus on, if you set yourself apart as the one person who’s an expert in that arena, your company might hesitate to give you the boot.

2. Know the business inside and out

Maybe you’re the best copy director your company has ever seen. But if your knowledge base is limited to effective sales pitches, and you’re not well-versed in market research, finances, or analytics, then you might still find yourself out of a job if your company is forced to slash positions. On the other hand, if you make an effort to educate yourself on all aspects of the business, your company will have a much harder time letting you go.

How do you get there? Sit in on other teams’ meetings, and ask to collaborate with various groups on recurring projects. The more exposure you get to different areas of your company and how they work, the more your management team might end up fighting to keep you.

3. Keep up with your business associates

It’s no secret that networking has been proved to help countless searchers land jobs, but many people find themselves networking defensively — that is, they only start reconnecting with contacts once they’re out of a job and need help. But if you make a point to stay in solid touch with your associates regularly, you’ll protect yourself in the face of layoffs in two ways.

First, if you network extensively within your company, you’ll have more people around to speak highly of you, which might spare you from getting the ax. Second, if you have associates you contact regularly, you won’t come across as taking advantage by reaching out for help if you are indeed let go. Or to put it another way, it’s a lot easier to ask a favor of someone you’re in touch with regularly than to sneak up as a blast from the past wanting assistance.

4. Boost your emergency savings

Having more money in the bank won’t do a thing to help you avoid losing your job. What it willdo, however, is buy you some peace of mind that if you are let go, you won’t have to immediately resort to credit card debt just to keep up with your finances. Having that stress removed might, in turn, help you focus better at work, thus reducing your chances of landing on the chopping block. Plus, if you are laid off, you’ll be less pressured into taking the first job you find because you’re desperate for money.

Though layoffs are sometimes inevitable, there are things you can do to lower your odds when your company is going through them. If anything, working on the above suggestions will give you someplace to focus your energy so you’re not utterly fixated on the thought of losing your job.

This article was originally published on The Motley Fool. It is reprinted with permission.

Related Links:

Glassdoor.com | February 13, 2018 | Posted by Maurie Backman, The Motley Fool

#Leadership : From Landing A Promotion To Harnessing Stress: October’s Top Leadership Stories…This Month’s Top Stories may Help you Put your Stress to Good Use, Write Better Cover Letters, or Even End the Year with a Promotion.

October 30, 2016/in First Sun Blog/by First Sun Team

This month, we learned which cover letter gaffes turn hiring managers away, what kinds of work-related stress may actually be useful, and why the cybersecurity sector may want to consider recruiting musicians.

These are the stories you loved in Leadership in October 2016:

1. I REVIEW HUNDREDS OF COVER LETTERS—HERE’S WHAT I INSTANTLY REJECT

The days of the cover letter may ultimately be numbered, but they’re still widely used to screen candidates. These are some of the most common immediate disqualifiers, according to one experienced hiring manager.

2. I’M A CEO—HERE’S HOW I DECIDE WHETHER TO GIVE YOU A RAISE OR LAY YOU OFF

Got your eye on a raise or promotion by the end of the year? To get it, you’ll need to make a case for what you’re worth to your company. This month, one CEO shared the basic math he uses to make decisions like these, saying, “For every dollar that you hope to get in increased pay, you need to bring in three to five dollars to the business for your raise to make sense.”

3. USE THIS FORMULA TO TAME YOUR HOPELESS TO-DO LIST

Chances are your to-do list is a bit of a jumble, right? You’re not alone—the very act of prioritizing your daily action items sometimes doesn’t feel like a top priority. But with this straightforward method, you can give your work tasks some much-needed structure, and all you need to know are your ABCs.

4. SORRY, BUT SOME WORK-RELATED STRESS IS GOOD FOR YOU

Chronic stress can be a workplace killer, but researchers believe that smaller doses of “acute” stress may actually help us develop our skills and boost productivity. Here’s a look at a few ways to make limited amounts of job-related stress work in your favor.

5. GM TO TOP TECH TALENT: DITCH SILICON VALLEY FOR DETROIT

The legacy carmaker isn’t exactly known for its fast-paced, innovative culture, but CEO Mary Barra is trying to change that. With several key acquisitions under its belt, GM is picking up a few things from the tech world, hoping the best and brightest will take note.

6. 3 CRUCIAL THINGS I’VE LEARNED IN MY FIRST 30 DAYS AS A MANAGER

Becoming a new manager isn’t easy. For Buffer’s Katie Womersley, it didn’t help that she felt the people she was tasked with managing were better developers than she was. Here’s what she says it took to shake that self-doubt and settle into her new role.

7. GWYNETH PALTROW ON WHY HER MONTHLY CAPSULE COLLECTIONS SELL OUT IN HOURS

Paltrow told Fast Company this month that recent rumors she’d be leaving Goop, her lifestyle brand, are dead wrong. The company is growing fast, thanks in no small part to the “lean” startup methods that inform its new, curated product lines featuring just a handful of items at a time.

8. THREE WAYS TO WRITE SHORTER, MORE EFFECTIVE EMAILS

Email is only as effective as what it gets done, so this week we learned how to trim the inefficiencies out of our messages to make sure they accomplish more in fewer words.

9. MUSICIANS MAY BE THE KEY TO THE CYBERSECURITY TALENT SHORTAGE

Data breaches are becoming so commonplace that the cybersecurity sector can’t seem to grow fast enough to help organizations defend themselves. In fact, the sector is at 0% unemployment, and the race to find qualified talent is driving up wages. That means looking for crossover skills in unlikely places, and some believe that musical training may be one of them.

10. SCIENCE-BACKED WAYS TO BUILD CONFIDENCE WHEN YOU FEEL LIKE YOU’RE OUT OF YOUR LEAGUE

There’s plenty of advice out there for faking confidence, but the better approach may actually be to persuade yourself to actually feel the vibe you’re trying to project. Here’s a look at the latest psychological research on how to trick your brain into greater self-assurance.

FAST COMPANY STAFF 10.28.16 5:00 AM

Your #Career : Walmart Layoffs; Troubling Signs For White Collar Workers…Your Job — Whether you’re a Blue Collar Worker or from the Professional Class — Will always Be in Jeopardy. Sometimes, Like in the Case of the Recent Walmart Announcements, those Threats can Come as a Surprise.

September 11, 2016/in First Sun Blog/by First Sun Team

Redundancy and layoffs are typically worries for low-wage, blue-collar workers — at least these days. Technology and automation are creeping into the picture, and that has millions of workers on edge about the future of their jobs. But white-collar workers haven’t experienced the same anxieties, at least not to the same extent. Sure, white-collar employees face layoffs as well, but they’re typically less expendable and have a bit more job security.That may be changing, however, as some of the nation’s largest employers are starting to cut back not only on low-skilled workers but on those in the professional class as well. That is, it’s not only cashiers that may be on the chopping block. Accountants could be next.

They are next, in fact.

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LONDON - SEPTEMBER 15: Employees comfort each other outside Lehman Brothers' Canary Wharf office on September 15, 2008 in London, England. The fourth largest American investment bank has announced that it is filing for bankruptcy protection during a growing financial crisis. (Photo by Cate Gillon/Getty Images)

White collar workers faced layoffs at Lehman Brothers in 2008, and now they face them at Walmart

For proof, you need to look no further than America’s largest private employer, Walmart. The company recentlyannounced the layoffs of 7,000 back-office employees, mostly those working in accounting and invoicing. These jobs will now be handed off to automation systems, which Walmart had been experimenting with in several hundred of its stores prior to deciding to make the call.Walmart did say that the fired employees would have chances to remain with the company in other capacities.

Walmart layoffs

A woman at a closed Walmart trying to make sense of it all

A woman at a closed Walmart trying to make sense of it all | Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images

7,000 employees being fired by the nation’s largest private employer isn’t that big of a deal, really. The company has earned a reputation for being an adversary of the working man, in many respects, and has had little troubleclosing entire stores on a whim due to talk of unionization, or other perceived dangers to its business model.

Wal-Mart says the move is being made in an effort to expend more resources in its stores themselves. Walmart has earned itself a reputation with American consumers, and though millions love shopping there, a large contingency also avoids its stores for a number of reasons. Facing increased competition from online options — Amazon, mostly — Walmart execs are trying to make their stores more pleasant to shop in, to lure consumers away from their computers and into brick-and-mortar locations.

With that comes a cut down on back-office staff, or those who aren’t helping them achieve that goal. This, from what is being reported, anyway.

This is more or less standard fare for a changing economy, though. Jobs are created and destroyed when new technologies or businesses are created. But it can’t or shouldn’t sit well with workers who felt that they had job security.

White collar jobs on the chopping block?

A white collar worker receives a rude notice regarding layoffs

A white collar worker receives a rude notice regarding layoffs | iStock.com

Let’s not lose perspective; we’re only talking about 7,000 jobs. In the grand scheme of things, that’s not an awful lot. But we’re not used to hearing about accountants or office workers getting the boot because they’ve been replaced by computers or technology — that’s something usually associated with fast food workers, or taxi drivers. Should white collar workers be worried?

Kind of. Sooner or later just about everything you can imagine will be automated to some degree. There are numerous jobs and industries that will soon be handed over to technologies, like long-haul trucking, for example. It’ll be a painful process, but people will find other jobs and other things to do. But the big difference here is that specialized skills — like those done by many white collar workers — are also being made redundant by technology.

It’s making the future seem a lot scarier, rather than awesome, for people who aren’t holding patents or intellectual property rights. How is one supposed to make a living in a future where human labor is widely unneeded? That, of course, is a bit hyperbolic, but it’s a conversation that needs to start somewhere.

The best option may be to just suck out as much wealth from the system as possible and run — as the folks running for-profit education company ITT Tech recently did.

The key is to stay ahead of the game and know what skills are going to be in demand in the future. You’ve heard it before, but here it is again: Learn a skill — a skill that commands value. As anyone can tell you these days, even a college degree isn’t going to get you much unless you can do something with it.

Your job — whether you’re a blue collar worker or from the professional class — will always be in jeopardy. Sometimes, like in the case of the recent Walmart announcements, those threats can come as a surprise.

Follow Sam on Twitter @Sliceofginger and Facebook

CheatSheet.com | September 11, 2016 | Sam Elliott

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Your #Career : 25 Signs your Company is About to Conduct Mass Layoffs…If you Notice a Combination of these Signs in your Own Company, it May be Time to Start Looking for a New Job.

August 9, 2016/in First Sun Blog/by First Sun Team

In my career as a journalist, I’ve lived through two rounds of mass layoffs. While I didn’t see either of them coming, hindsight is always 20/20, and I now have a much better sense for when the tides are changing.

To get a better understanding of the signs that layoffs are coming, I polled others who’ve been through them, scoured the news about high-profile mass layoffs, and crawled the depths of the internet.

If you notice a combination of these signs in your own company, it may be time to start looking for a new job.

The most obvious sign: Executives confirm layoffs are coming

Kimberly White/Getty Images for Vanity Fair

Last year, Twitter’s Jack Dorsey and ESPN’s John Skipper sent memos to employees detailing imminent layoffs.

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Executives hint at layoffs using other terms, like ‘restructuring’

Executives hint at layoffs using other terms, like 'restructuring'

Reuters

HP, which has been going through layoffs since 2008, proves there are many indirect ways of saying “layoffs.”

CEO Meg Whitman and other HP executives have used terms like “downsizing,” “restructuring,” “reorganizing,” “incremental synergies,” “offshoring,” and “streamlining.”

Intel CEO Brian Krzanich used the term “headcount reductions” in an email he sent to employees about rumored layoffs.

And IBM has referred to layoffs as “workforce rebalancing.”

If you hear or see these terms bandied about, it’s time to brace yourself.

Your company gives you a ‘non-negotiable’ job offer

http://www.businessinsider.com/cms/posts/edit?id=50abddf3eab8eab77c000009

If you don’t take the non-negotiable job offer, you will get laid off.

Last year, HP gave a group of several hundred employees in its struggling enterprise-services unit an unusual ultimatum: Either take the new job we’ve lined up for you — or get laid off without severance.

A WARN notice has been issued

New York Department of Labor WARN notice

If more than 250 full-time employees are being laid off, or if 25 or more full-time employees are being laid off and this constitutes 33% of all workers at the site, a company must file a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) with the state’s Department of Labor 90 days prior to the layoffs.

This is public information that can be found on a state’s DOL website. As an example, here’s the New York site.

Your company’s IPO flops

YouTube / Margin Call trailer

As Business Insider’s Alexei Oreskovic reports, layoffs are often a symptom of a souring market. If your company’s IPO flops, it could be a sign layoffs are coming.

Your company is hiring too fast

REUTERS/Stringer

For a while, Groupon was the world’s fastest-growing company.

When the company opened its offices in Korea just two and a half years after launching, it hired 300 people in a week by pulling them in off the street, The Telegraph reports. At the time the company had already expanded to more than 40 countries.

Last year, however, the company announced it would lay off 1,100 people and would close operations in seven countries.

When a company grows rapidly, it risks overshooting its needs, and may eventually be forced to make tough decisions. However, there are many successful companies that grow rapidly, hire aggressively, and then settle down.

Your company gets acquired or merges with another

Thomson Reuters

After Kraft and Heinz merged last year, it announced that the combined company would cut 2,500 jobs, Fortune reports.

Mergers frequently lead to layoffs. As Business Insider has written, “synergy” is the one word that should terrify employees: “Synergy is what you get when you eliminate redundancies in your efforts to cut costs.”

There’s already been a round of layoffs

REUTERS/Joshua Lott

The first round of layoffs is rarely the last.

Your access to work accounts is denied

You’re invited to a group meeting with the department head, and her personal assistant confirms with you that you’ll be there
REUTERS/Kevin Coombs
Based on my personal experience, if the only time you hear from an executive’s personal assistant is regarding a mysterious meeting scheduled that morning for your whole department, your concern might be warranted.
Internal job postings get taken down
Rachel Gillett/Business Insider
“I was once at a company where I was interviewing for a promotion, only to find out in the middle of it that the position had been eliminated,” one writer told me. “The writing was pretty much on the wall, and when the pink slips started coming, I can’t say I was a bit surprised.”
“It’s always tough, though,” he noted. “If it’s not happening to you, it’s happening to someone you’ve spent years working with, and you know it’s going to hit their family hard in most cases.”
You’re expected to do more with less
Michael Duxbury/flickr
Employees facing layoffs may first be asked to do more with fewer employees and resources in a last ditch effort to turn a profit.
People are told they can’t work from home on a specific day
Getty Images/Mario Tama
Larry Cornett, founder and CEO of Voicekick, says that after working in Silicon Valley for more than 20 years, he’s come to regard certain anomalies as signs layoffs are coming. Losing the ability to work from home is one of them.
“Work-from-home days are fairly common in tech companies,” he writes on Medium. “Employees will be told that everyone needs to come into the office on a specific day and that they cannot work from home that day. Thus, the layoff day is identified.”
The higher-ups take steps to “improve efficiencies”
Scenes like those in “Office Space” really happen.YouTube / Office Space
Introducing time sheets and bringing in consultants are often the first steps higher-ups take to understand teams better and find ways to tighten.
One editor, who didn’t see her previous company’s shutdown coming, said she should have been suspicious when the company brought a new board-appointed CFO to look over the books. “These are often at least a sign of a turnaround coming for the company, if not a total shutdown,” she said.
Or they ask a ton of questions about what you do
VFS Digital Design/Flickr
Superiors asking you to list the daily tasks and responsibilities that you and each of the members of your team perform is a common sign of restructuring to come.
Requests to share passwords, training documents, and other things that may not be written down are sometimes done to smooth impending dismissals.

Higher-ups start quitting

Margin Call screenshot

Senior managers are usually privy to what’s going on at the top. Pay attention if they start heading for the exits.

The discretionary stuff starts to go

Sergio Vassio Photography/flickr

Fewer parties and happy hours, less and cheaper food and drinks in the kitchen, no more expensed lunch for meetings, stingy vacation time — these could all be signs that the end is nigh.

Company bills aren’t getting paid

PROAlan Levine/flickr

“I started receiving emails from clients about bills that had gone unpaid,” said one worker who’d been through layoffs. “I thought the accounts team had just missed paying them, but looking back, that was a sign we were in financial trouble with nothing left in the bank.”

The uprooting of plants

Tim Lucas/flickr

“No matter how secret an upcoming round of layoffs may be, the seal is never 100% rumor-tight. There’s always one old-school veteran who knows something,” writes Evany Thomas, a brand writer and content strategist at Pinterest, who details getting laid off twice in a Medium post.

“And the way you can tell they know is that they start bringing home all their accumulated personal belongings in easy-to-manage nightly shipments. Starting with their plants.”

Conference rooms are booked by HR all day

Thomson Reuters

Whenever conference rooms are booked all day by your company’s human-resources department, it’s a sign that big changes are coming, and they’re probably not good.

Good news like bonuses and raises can be delivered individually in a number of ways. But HR folks prefer to deliver bad news like layoffs behind closed doors.

Some Yahoo employees reportedly knew layoffs were coming last year: “Employees saw it coming when on getting to work two to three conference rooms in every floor were suddenly reserved for HR with all previously scheduled meetings in the room canceled,” one source told Business Insider.

All managers are suddenly pulled into a series of meetings that span a few days

Flickr/Sebastiaan ter Burg

Cornett says this is another sign layoffs are in the works. And if managers find it difficult to directly answer questions about what is going on with all the meetings, this could serve as confirmation.

There are more tissue boxes than usual

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Your office managers could just be stepping up their allergy-season game, but if these tissue boxes are conveniently stacked up in conference rooms — especially ones that are booked by HR — chances are some bad news is on the horizon.

There are a lot of empty boxes around.

rick/flickr

Unless you missed the memo that you’re moving to a nicer office, odds are those boxes aren’t a pleasant surprise.

Upper management avoids your gaze

Shutterstock

“When I got let go from Friendster, I was blindsided. I totally failed to see it coming,” Thomas writes.

“When all of us let-goners went out for the traditional post-layoff drinks, everybody teased me for missing the signs. ‘You mean you didn’t notice that upper management had stopped making eye contact weeks ago? Amateur.'”

You stop getting invited to important meetings

Dotshock/Shuttershock

“It’s usually a sign that you will personally be laid off when senior management postpones a meeting with you that they usually accept or you stop receiving invitations to meetings for long-term planning or where confidential/strategic information will be discussed,” Cornett writes.

Businessinsider.com | August 9, 2016 |

Rachel Gillett

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