By focusing on laid-off individuals’ innate strengths, both employee and employer can achieve a win-win situation
In an International Labour Organization (ILO) report in June tabulating job loss from the COVID-19 fallout, the United Nations agency found that working hours globally had fallen 14 percent during the second quarter of 2020. That worked out to the equivalent of 400 million full-time jobs lost. Even in its best-case recovery scenario, the ILO expects a net loss of 34 million full-time jobs for the remainder of 2020 compared to the same period in 2019.
Getting laid off is seldom, if ever, a pleasant experience for all involved. But there are positives to be gained, from both the perspectives of the employee and the employer.
“We see retrenchment as a means to a new opportunity,” explains Minal Jagtiani, co-founder at management consultancy LeadThink, referring to its employee transformation programme. Built around a unique Capability Model and utilising tools such as the Gallup StrengthsFinder test, Jagtiani seeks to divert retrenched professionals’ focus to their innate capabilities instead of their function and role in an organisation.
“How can I position myself not on employability but on expertise? That's the key premise. That's the shift that we are trying make.”
Transforming the employee
Jagtiani elaborates that the employee transformation programme is about:
- clarity on career goals;
- self-awareness of capabilities
- validation with a strength assessment tool;
- strategising the positioning of the individual;
- and using of entrepreneurial elements of the individual, leading to empowerment.
“If there is somebody I want to be, or this is where I see myself five years from now, where am I and what do I need to do to achieve it?” she says, expanding on a potential jobseeker’s process of charting a professional path post-retrenchment. “After I've gone through this whole discovery process in which the unique capability of the individual is revealed, I then work towards career aspiration.
“It's possible because I stand for all these achievements [at the job I’ve just lost]. I stand for these values. I stand for these capabilities, on the plank of which my organisation has been able to get the best out of me. After which we populate the brand template to work on the strategy session on social media for the individual.”
With regard to a ‘brand template’, Jagtiani cites Harvey Coleman’s PIE model where 10 percent of success comes from (P)erformance, 30 percent from (I)mage, and 60 percent from (E)xposure where the latter is about those in positions of influence knowing who you are and what you do. But while publicising one’s ability is key, the right positioning based on the individual’s expertise must first be crafted.
Jagtiani recommends that jobseekers post on LinkedIn their professional stories to create their professional brand. She elaborates:
“While it is great to list qualifications and professional achievements, importantly it's also about what you have done, and why is it you are doing it. It’s about being useful, about sharing knowledge and the value that's going to come out of that conversation. That's what we want you to put out on LinkedIn, and this is what will be attractive to your potential hirer or anyone else who might be spending time reading your post.”
What’s in it for the employer?
With companies laying off staff, bigger organisations with the necessary resources will be expected to help retrenched employees find a new job. While the cost of a programme to discover intrinsic capabilities and clarity on career goals might be beyond an SME, Jagtiani explains that the employer who is able to stump up the cash also benefits from signing up for the employee transformation programme.
“Organisations benefit when it is seen as a learning organisation,” she tells Perspectives@SMU. “When I say, ‘This is what I learnt, these are the challenges, and this is what my team and I did when I was working here,’ that communication portrays the individual as a learning individual, and the organisation is also seen as such.
“It's proven that something that an employee says about an organisation buys you much more positive feedback. A post or something credible you say about an organisation as an employee of the company, whether ex-employee or not, will buy you 10 times more followership than an organisation putting out a corporate -message.”
The programme also helps HR managers start the difficult conversation that kicks off every employee rationalisation process.
“HR managers are the ones who have to say, ‘You have to go,’ and it's very hard for them,” Jagtiani says. “But if I change it from an HR challenge to say that it's a programme on capability discovery, that once discovered is relevant and industry-agonistic, it is empowering. It minimises the vulnerability that an impacted employee will naturally feel on account of retrenchment.”
She adds: “You're going to be taking the services of an outplacement agency, why not look at supporting it with benefits and really adding value to the exit process? It's about enabling the retrenched employees to deal with these turbulent times, not only about finding that job, but in recognising their capability and in the process make them more ready for the way jobs are going to be structured.
“Can we help our employees say, ‘This is what I have done for the organisation and this is what I stand for’; ‘I’ve lost my job, but with my new-found capability I can ‘market’ it for a new opportunity.’ This is about employee first."
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Last updated on 31 Aug 2020 .
