Organizations and the Survivor Syndrome

Survivor syndrome is a state of mind which occurs among people who survive after going through an event of emotional disturbance. This event could be anything. It could be a natural disaster or any kind of emotional disturbance. The person surviving through the event or who stays unsafe from such events feels guilty.

In the business world the survivor syndrome is related to the job cuts. When an organization reduces the headcounts to control its expenses or it layoff’s incompetent employees then survivor syndrome is found among the surviving employees. The employees who survive the job cuts feel depressed. Their motivation level reduces and they suffer from high stress, anxiety and sleeplessness which reduce their performance. Everyone knows that whenever headcounts are reduced in any organization their work load shifts to those who survive the layoff. This increases the pressure on the employees as their job responsibilities increase.

Businesses now focus a lot the organizational culture. They try to maintain healthy relationships among the employees and promote friendliness accompanied with professionalism. This creates a bond among the employees and when employees are being fired immediately the bond among them breaks. This creates a disturbance in the whole process and promotes the survivor syndrome among employees. The biggest reason of survivor syndrome in the employees is that they feel insecure in their job. When they see others being fired they feel that their job is also insecure and it will not last for a longer time.

What an organization needs to do is to create a control over employees from approaching survivor syndrome. They can do it by making the layoff process crystal clear and by designing a proper mechanism for the process of firing. They must develop a performance analysis program and implement it fairly. This will make all the employees understand that the organization is keeping a performance check and they will take action against the employees who are not performing well. When the employees are being fired following a proper mechanism the surviving employees don’t feel surprised and they do not feel insecure and they know that their performance is satisfactory.

Organizations which do not control the survivor syndrome face real tough time because their surviving employees which they think will perform good start performing badly due to the syndrome. Therefore, for an organization where the process of hiring is important there exists equal importance for the process of firing the employees.