There’s hope for the newly jobless

STAY CALM: S. Thomas Wharton, managing director of OI Partners-Lifocus, tells the newly jobless to avoid doing anything they’ll “regret later on.” / PBN PHOTO/DAVID LEVESQUE
STAY CALM: S. Thomas Wharton, managing director of OI Partners-Lifocus, tells the newly jobless to avoid doing anything they’ll “regret later on.” / PBN PHOTO/DAVID LEVESQUE

You had heard the downsizing rumors, asked why you were left out of meetings and noticed your boss wasn’t making eye contact.
Now it’s official: You’ve been laid off. What do you do next?
If you’re lucky and have a good severance package, you’ll probably meet with someone like S. Thomas Wharton, managing partner of OI Partners-Lifocus Inc. in Warwick, which provides outplacement services for the newly jobless.
“The first thing I would tell someone is, don’t panic,” Wharton said. “Don’t go out tomorrow and start waiving your old resumes around. … Don’t do anything you’ll regret later on.”
As the ranks of the jobless swelled during the recession, getting the recently unemployed back on their feet became much harder and much more important.
Much of the focus, especially in the public sector, has been at the lower end of the income scale, helping the factory workers and victims of mass layoffs recover from losing jobs that have no similar replacement and may never come back.
But in such a tight and rapidly shifting job market, managers and executives have also struggled to find their way after losing a position they held for a long time.
That’s where the private career-counseling and leadership-consulting industry has grown in recent years, offering contract outplacement services and counseling for laid-off workers, for companies to include in their benefit packages.
For some, the fact that companies will spend money on helping find new jobs for laid-off workers, instead of putting those resources toward keeping them employed in the first place, seems perverse.
But as Wharton explained, outplacement services can help protect the company from negative secondary effects of layoffs that could spiral out of control and further jeopardize the business.
“Companies realize there is a public relations benefit,” Wharton said. “Especially if it is someone with a prominent role, the last thing you want is for them to feel they have been treated badly and go right to the media.”
Donna Sullivan, vice president and general manager of Transition Solutions in Lincoln, said outplacement services are almost as beneficial for those workers who remain as those let go.
“Those who see layoffs and downsizing of co-workers they have known for 10, 20, even 35 years want to make sure they are being treated well,” Sullivan said. “And when they see something like severance and outplacement, they think the company is doing the best it can in a tough situation.” As a result, both Sullivan and Wharton said they saw no cutback in outplacement services during the recession.
In a typical outplacement-services arrangement, the firm providing counseling services will be in the building when a worker is notified they are being let go, and talk to them immediately after the notification about how they can help in the transition.
In some cases, the outplacement firm will help in arranging the timing and logistics of the layoffs, Wharton said.
Exactly how long the outplacement firm will work with each unemployed worker depends on the deal worked out with the former employer. Companies have become increasingly aggressive about negotiating the most counseling for each dollar.
Wharton said for a management-level employee, the average length of assistance might be two to three months. Vice-president-level counseling might be three to six months and “c-suite” executive (CEO, chief financial officers, etc.) could be up to a year.
In addition to traditional counseling activities – like polishing old resumes, rebuilding morale and looking for new job opportunities – contemporary outplacement-service providers now offer help with social networking and identifying potential career shifts.
Especially in industries going through structural upheaval, where finding an equivalent may not be practical, outplacement firms offer testing for clients to help them identify what their talents are and whether a switch to a growing field may be advantageous.
Asked what the first thing is she tells the newly jobless, Sullivan at Transition Solutions said a top priority is thinking about how they will explain and frame the job loss to prospective employers.
“The first thing is to think about what you are going to tell people about why you have left,” Sullivan said. “It needs to be as positive as it can be. If you were laid off, you want to let other employers know you weren’t fired.”
The R.I. Department of Labor and Training offers many of the same career counseling and outplacement services as private firms in a free format open to everyone through the NetworkRI program.
While it may not be as flashy as the private firms, the state can provide one-stop information on unemployment benefits and connections to public workforce-training programs.
Asked for her best advice to the newly jobless, DLT spokeswoman Laura Hart said “review your skills. You may be surprised at how many work-related skills you have acquired.” •

No posts to display