As I’m watching the hundreds of articles, reading the checklists, and listening to the bloviation about finding new employment and planning for your future when you lose your current job, it seems to me that we’ve overlooked the most important and simple solution—doing our best to keep the job we’ve got.

It seems to make sense that keeping the job you’ve got is a lot easier than trying to find another one, then another one, and then another one. Here are, from management’s perspective, the behaviors of those employees that have the most value, most of the time. These employees are likely to be retained when cuts or worse have to be carried out:

1. Do your job. Understand what your job is, get a job description, figure it out, and do it.
2. Make your budget or sales goal, if you have these responsibilities.
3. Make the plans or strategies you’re engaged in actually work.
4. Help others succeed and accomplish their part of the plan.
5. Reduce stress, tension, and contention. Be a peacemaker.
6. Get along. Help others be more comfortable in what they’re trying to accomplish.
7. Be a finisher. Get things done. Wherever possible, stop those things that will never be done.
8. Be a source of inspiration. Help others have better days. Most of the time, others will focus on what really matters because that’s what you are doing.

Did I miss anything?

For more information about layoffs, visit the article in my eNewsletter, The Dark Art of Laying People Off.

James E. Lukaszewski, ABC, Fellow IABC; APR, Fellow PRSA, BEPS Emeritus

If you have questions, or would like to dive more deeply into the subject of this blog, you can reach me 24/7 at jel@e911.com; 203-948-7029 (voicemail, email, text). I look forward, as a friend and colleague, to helping you achieve the objectives you’ve set for yourself for having a happier, more influential, successful and meaningful career.

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