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Layoffs May Cause a Company's Most Valuable Employees to Leave on Their Own

Published Sunday, July 22, 2001 in the Pioneer Press.

By Casey Selix

Layoffs may cause a company's most valuable employees to leave on their own.

Teresa Rothausen, assistant professor of management at the University of St. Thomas, is conducting a study of workers who last year voluntarily left five Fortune 500 companies based here.

All of the companies had gone − or were going − through mergers, acquisitions, restructuring or layoffs, said Rothausen, whose research focus is on work/life and work/family issues. About 200 surveys were returned and researchers have personally interviewed 45 respondents.

Most of the 45 had "extremely high performance evaluations,'' said Rothausen, who is working jointly with the companies and the Center for Ethical Business Cultures at St. Thomas. She declined to name the companies because of a confidentiality agreement.

The basic questions posed by Rothausen: What were the considerations that caused people to leave and what was attractive about the new job?

"About half the time people expressed the "Am I next?' kind of feeling,'' Rothausen said. "It (a layoff) was especially egregious to employees when they had known their coworkers for some time and they were friends. The word I heard a lot was, "Poof!' Their coworkers had suddenly disappeared, there was no explanation why and they didn't get a chance to say good-bye.''

Weariness of management changes and the impact of quarterly earnings reports surfaced in interviews, she said.

"One guy had seven managers in something like two years and felt like he couldn't do the work (he was hired to do) because of all the time he had to spend figuring out the new manager and which direction the company was going,'' Rothausen said.

Wall Street's emphasis on companies meeting quarterly earnings expectations -- which can lead to layoffs if they don't − also took a toll, she said.

"One woman went through a few layoffs and decided to go work for government (which she thought would be more stable). She said she couldn't go back to corporate America again and wouldn't work for a company that's publicly traded.''

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