Preparing for a Potential Layoff: Adopt a Proactive Mindset

Michael is a technical project/program management manager.

  Career Development  

Over the past few months, it seems we have been reading about numerous companies downsizing their headcount by laying off employees. This downsizing has been with companies both large and small, and across most sectors that we all work in.

Adding to this uneasiness is the news hammering us that a recession is on the horizon. For many, this creates an unusual amount of stress and uncertainty in our working world—which quite often bleeds into our personal lives due to financial obligations we have.

While the reality is that changes may impact us negatively, there are steps that can be taken to help mitigate these impacts and place you in a position where the change can quite possibly morph into an opportunity that would have gone unseen otherwise.

In this article, I want to provide you with a proactive mindset to the problem and allow you to regain focus on the tasks we need to complete to remain at the top of our game.

1. Decide
When confronting any professional risk, the first action to take is determining the root cause of the risk. This will provide clarity on what your focus should be on to relieve your anxiety and stress. Performing a risk analysis will enable you to determine the root cause of your stresses and allow prioritization of them.

A risk analysis is performed by multiplying the probability by the impact using a 1-5 rating scale (5 being the …

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