KAREN DEVELOS- SACDALAN
Rumination and Anxiety during Downsizing :
How Can Outplacement Services Help ?
Karen Develos-Sacdalan is a consultant of LHH DBM ( Lee Hecht Harrison- Drake Beam Morin ), a leading global talent and transition management consulting firm providing services to private and public companies , and government entities . She is a certified Industrial / Organizational Psychology specialist by PAP ( Psychological Association of the Philippines ) with fourteen years of HR management practice , and a Psychology professor in Mapúa Institute of Technology . She obtained both a bachelor ’ s and master ’ s degrees in Psychology and is currently in the Ph . D . in Special Education program at the University of the Philippines Diliman . For comments , you may send an email to : kay . sacdalan @ gmail . com .
With the constant mix of organizational changes that necessitate the interplay of system and human behavior , rumination and anxiety have become some of the natural occurrences present in employees today . By definition , ‘ rumination ’ or post-event is a response to distress where an individual passively and continuously thinks of the cause of their distress while failing to solve or eliminate the cause ( Nolen-Hoeksema et al , 1999 ).
In the process of rumination , the individual repetitively goes through the reviews of the situation by focusing on the negative aspects of the situation , such as the causes , meaning , and implication of the source of the distress ( McLaughin , 2011 ; Maria et al ., 2012 ). Particularly , it is most commonly observed in companies who are in a state of transition . Previously known as an “ outplacement ” service , the entire practice is now termed as “ transition management ,” which constitutes of a program designed for employees who are leaving the company . It is this aspect of the employment experience where management needs to be aware that rumination and anxiety among employees does happen and should be managed with utmost care . To do so effectively , there exist career coaches , who are the ones who take the lead in transition programs and help address these ruminative symptoms . They have the appropriate expertise to objectively deal and manage varying degrees of rumination and anxiety during downsizing . Perhaps most importantly , beyond the program designs and strategies of career decisionmaking , a transition management program attends to the complicated and sensitive issues of separation simply for the very reason of being human .
In the process of employment separation , telling the “ big news ” is equally daunting in helping employees to move on . Thus , rumination in this stage is undeniably at its highest form . When employees are finally no longer with the company , people cope in entirely different ways . Despite the most well-intentioned plans that management puts together , during the process of termination employees remain confronted by these ruminative symptoms . It is in this light that transition services are usually there to help ease the impact and effectively address issues that may emerge and possibly later lead to the onset of depressive symptoms . As research would attest , continuous rumination of a certain social event will affect the individual ’ s memory due to their repetitive reconstructing of the memory for the event so that it could fit their negative self-image and interpretation of social situations ( Kandris et al , 2007 ; Brozovich & Heimberg , 2011 ). This means that the more individuals dwell on something , they are more likely to remember these events or situations in a bad light even though there was no such intention to begin with .
This however , is not all of it . Aside from employees having to go through the process of letting go , they are likewise confronted with strong feelings of anxiety . “ Anxiety ” is generally defined in psychological terminology as a displeasing feeling of fear and concert ; it is the presence or absence of psychological stress , since anxiety can create feelings of fear , worry , uneasiness , and dread . During the separation period - when employees typically contemplate or think about their next career options , often times they are at a loss just thinking about what would be the next best move to take . By and large , these employees become extremely anxious , disoriented , and agitated , as if trying to make sense of things ( under ruminative condition ) and how to move forward without knowing where to go ( under anxious condition ). Notwithstanding this , both of these conditions , rumination ( past events ), and anxiety ( future events ), play an important role that may trigger dangerous mechanisms which may possibly to depression .
In my actual experience in providing transition services , employees who were laid off go through the ebb and flow of emotions while under a transition state . Regardless of whatever circumstances surrounded their leaving , whether these employees had “ hunches ” of an upcoming retrenchment , had some level of awareness in the big picture , or were totally clueless ,
18 PEOPLE MANAGER I January 2013