A good friend of mine, George Cartsonis, Director, College Communications, Oakland Community College, suggested that as I search for new employment, I should write a journal expressing my wide-range of feelings.
Yes, my emotions, like those of most people, run the gamut and I will not go into them now. I’ll save all of the riveting and revealing journal details for my tell-all auto biography!
In the meantime, journaling does work. It helps put your feelings and views on paper and enables you to sort through them. It helps you straighten out your emotions and thus get you headed in the right as you move forward with your life.
I have vowed to keep my blog positive and so you won’t see any harsh criticism of Corporate America. But if I had one wish for all of the CEOs and top company officials who make decisions that so strongly affect the lives of their workers, it’s that somehow they feel the pain of having their position eliminated in a downsizing move.
Yes, reducing staff is a business decision and reportedly made without emotion. But a little emotion doesn’t hurt, it may help those at the top remember that those workers being let go are human beings, not robots and definitely not numbers.
One more bit of advice to our corporate leaders, don’t tell a worker who faces a job elimination not to take it personally – the fact is it’s a very personal action that impacts not only the staff member being laid off but his entire family and the rest of their lives.
