Of trophies and battle-scars

This post was triggered by the conversations that I have had with Human Resources (HR) leaders who had played a leading role in 'workforce restructuring'/'workforce right-sizing' efforts in their respective companies. What struck me the most was the wide variation in the manner in which those restructuring efforts impacted these leaders. This was most evident in the way those leaders remembered those experiences, in the way talked about their role in those restructuring efforts and in the marks (residual emotions) it seems to have left on them as individuals. 

On one end of the spectrum were leaders who were 'deeply scarred' by those experiences. It was quite painful for them even to speak about it. On the other end were leaders who proudly displayed those experiences as 'trophies'.  Most of the HR leaders fall somewhere in between these two extremes. 

After the restructuring was done, there were leaders who organized lavish 'victory celebrations' for the restructuring team and there were leaders who found a way to avoid such celebrations. Some of them immediately updated their CVs/LinkedIn profiles to highlight this expertise (or even positioned themselves as 'restructuring experts') while the other leaders didn't do anything of that sort. 

The interesting thing was that the above variations were not really a matter of how successful those restructuring efforts were or how significant/effective were the roles of the leaders in those restructuring efforts! 

One of the factors that makes this issue complex is the dual role played by HR leaders - as they are both the facilitators and the survivors of restructuring!

Survivors of restructuring/downsizing exercises often suffer from the so called ‘workplace survivor syndrome’ with symptoms like anxiety, depression, decrease in performance, poor morale and increased propensity to leave. At the heart of the survivor syndrome lies two emotions- guilt (“I didn't deserve to survive when my friends didn't”) and fear (“Next time, it could be my turn”). Being employees (and human beings) themselves, the HR leaders are not immune to these emotions/reactions!

In the case of the HR leaders, since they were also facilitators of restructuring, the feeling of guilt can get accentuated. This usually happens in those cases where the HR leaders take their 'employee champion' role as seriously as their 'business partner role' and for some reason they feel that they haven't done all they should have done in the given context. 

Usually, the HR leaders are not the final decision-makers on whether to initiate restructuring/whether restructuring is the best option to enhance organization effectiveness in a given context. Being part of the leadership team they are expected to contribute to/influence the decision-making process and to implement the decision once the decision has made. Yes, how early they get involved in the decision-making process and the degree of influence they have on the same will have a bearing on the level of conviction and ownership they feel. 

Also, the HR leaders often play a very important part in deciding how exactly the restructuring should be carried out, how to balance the organization and employee interests/perspectives, how to ensure fairness and how to minimize possible adverse impact on the employer brand, employee engagement and productivity. Yes, they do understand that sometimes 'surgery' is required. Even in those situations, they feel the responsibility to use a 'surgeon's blade' (not a 'butcher's knife') and to provide sufficient post-operative care!

Depending on how true the HR leaders have been to their own convictions during these actions, the level of guilt or satisfaction can vary significantly. Yes, it also depends on the personality of the HR leaders involved - some of them tend to assume too much responsibility and some of them tend to assume too little responsibility (or even psychologically distance themselves from the actions, sometimes using humor for doing so). 

Some of the HR leaders look at restructuring as 'just another task to be done' (something that 'comes with the terrain') and some of the HR leaders look at look at restructuring as something that can potentially create a conflict with their personal values or their belief systems (one HR leader told me that 'he accumulated a lot of bad karma' through his involvement in a particular restructuring exercise!) or with their motivations for a career in HR. From a larger perspective, it can be said that the very topic of 'business-orientation of HR' is indeed a paradoxical one.

Many of the HR leaders felt that communicating the job loss to the impacted employees individually was the most difficult part. Here also, the degree of conviction the HR leaders had about the need for the restructuring, the fairness of the process followed and the adequacy of the transition support provided to the impacted employees, drove the psychological impact on the HR leaders. Another important factor here (for the psychological impact on HR leaders) was whether these difficult conversations with the impacted employees were entirely 'outsourced' to HR or it was jointly owned and carried out by the line managers and the HR leaders. Yes, the 'axe-man' or 'executioner' personas are difficult to integrate for most of the people!  

It is also interesting to look at the sense-making process in the context of restructuring. Often, the restructuring process is interpreted/positioned as an important enabler for organization transformation and it is referred to by highly positive-sounding terms like 'organization renewal', 'workforce refresh' and 'top-grading'. 

There is nothing inherently wrong with these terms (the organization reality is socially constructed to large extent and these terms can serve as 'generative metaphors' in that social construction of reality) so long as they mirror the true intent. Also, from the point of view of the psychological impact on the HR leaders who are facilitating the change, this kind of positive positioning of the change can be very beneficial, if they are convinced about the positioning.  Yes, whether or not these actions/changes make a net positive difference to the organization is often difficult to determine in the short-term. It can be very much psychologically damaging for the HR leaders to feel that they are in some sort of a 'Sisyphus-like' situation where the years of work they have done in the organization to build employee engagement and the employer brand is getting ruined because of the restructuring!  

So, where does this leave us? Whether their involvement in facilitating a restructuring/downsizing effort becomes more of a 'trophy' or more of a 'battle-scar' for the HR leaders involved depends on a wide range of factors that go beyond the 'success' of the restructuring effort (seen in the context of its stated objectives). Yes, these two (trophies and battle-scars) need not necessarily be mutually exclusive. It can also be said that while our discussion here focused on the HR leaders, most of it applies to the Business Leaders also (i.e. the psychological impact of leading restructuring efforts in the case of business leaders).

'Battle-scars' need not necessarily be a bad thing. In a way, they make us 'battle-hardened' and more ready for future battles! By the way, it has been said that in some of the ancient societies 'counting the number of battle-scars' was used as the method for selecting leaders!!

Any comments/ideas?