Surviving a Layoff
What To Do If You Are A Company Layoff Victim
Here are tips to help you with surviving a layoff.
First, take a few deep breaths and collect yourself. If you handle this right, you can be out of job hell as soon as possible.
Immediately Following the Layoff Notice
1. Remain calm, cool and collected. After recent layoffs at my job, one woman was crying so hysterically that she had to have security guards help CARRY her to her car. Your life is not being terminated, your job is. There are lots of jobs. You will be just fine, especially if you took steps to shore up your personal finances before you ever needed information about surviving a layoff.
2. Take accurate and thorough notes on everything that your employer says or promises you during the exit process.
Get contact information and phone numbers of human resources representatives to ask for information later in case you need clarification of benefit information or you missed something that was said during the exit interview.
Write down:
* Specific information about severance benefits, including important phone numbers of individuals responsible
* Outplacement benefits
* How and when you’ll get paid
* What benefits (like health and life insurance) will continue and what it will cost you to extend coverage
* Contact information from people involved with benefits
* Retirement account, pension and 401(k) information
Don’t be afraid to ask questions. You aren’t likely to see these people again if you can help it. Now is not the time to worry about sounding dumb by asking a lot of questions.
3. Email your co-workers and superiors. If you can, write a very nice mass email where you thank everyone for working with them and say that you hope to keep in touch.
K.I.S.S.. don’t ramble about the good times by the water cooler.
Leave your personal email address (a professional sounding one, not dragonwarz99@bot.com) and express that you enjoyed working with them- even if you didn’t.
If you have the time, go around and get key personnel’s contact information. Go see your superiors and ask if you can use them for references. Write down their phone numbers.
Your co-workers- even if you hung out with Bert and Ernie every day at lunch, you didn’t necessarily call them at home. Now is your chance to get their information in case it will come in handy later during the job search.
When You Get Home
4. Resist the temptation to go on a shopping spree or drinking binge to let off steam. Surviving a layoff with your finances and dignity intact is hard enough without a bad hangover or more credit card bills to make it more difficult. Be nice to yourself.
Within the Next Three Days
5. Go through your packet thoroughly. You will likely get a lot of paperwork from your ex-employer during the exit process. Write down any questions that you have and call the Human Resources department to get them answered.
6. Go to any outplacement meetings scheduled by Human Resources. You may feel dehumanized, angry and like you don’t ever want to walk through the doorway of XYZ Widgets ever again. That is fine, but resist the urge to avoid help just to spite them. You might learn something you didn’t know at these meetings.
What else do you have to do?
7. Apply for Unemployment Insurance. This is a benefit that you’ve been paying for for YEARS through your taxes. It isn’t welfare or food stamps, put your pride back in your pocket and just apply.
To file for unemployment insurance, you will need your:
* Social Security Number
* W-2 Form
* Hire/recent layoff date
* Approximate Weekly Wage
8. Change your Budget. Knock out temporary expenses you don’t need. Consider roommates, canceling your cable, and cutting everything you can down to the level that Unemployment Insurance pays you.
Check out Financial Crisis Help for other ideas about surviving a layoff, and ways to cut your budget.
9. Check out your insurance options. Apply to COBRA to keep your employer’s group health coverage– but be prepared to pay up to 102% of the full insurance premium. You must apply within 60 days. This is one expense that you should budget for, because you never know when your health might go on the blink. Surviving a layoff won’t matter if you are killed by cancer because you don’t have health insurance.
10. Back away from your retirement funds. Do not touch your retirement money. If you can possibly avoid it, stay away from any money that you have reserved for retirement.
“But its a CRISIS,” you say. I say, the real crisis will be running out of money at 85 because you raided that money right now. The younger you are, the more adaptable you are to job searching. Doing it at 85 is going to be MUCH worse than doing it now. There is an inverse relationship between the coolness of eating Top Ramen for survival and advanced age. At 32, its a setback necessity. At 82, its just sad.
See, surviving a layoff isn’t as bad now that we’re comparing it with being 82 and needing money. That is what I’m talking about… peace of mind.
