“You’re not actually being more efficient or effective. You’re just burning yourself out,” warns psychologist Meredith Fuller. Image: iStock

By Angela Dorizas

Taking the axe to jobs can cause turmoil within an organisation and lead to greater inefficiencies, psychologists have warned.

In the wake of a restructure, it is not uncommon for “survivors” to feel anxious about job security, mournful of the loss of their colleagues and resentful of their extra workload.

But it is not the emotional wellbeing of remaining employees that managers should be concerned about, said Dr Simon Moss, a senior lecturer in psychology at Monash University.

“The problem that the managers might not be aware of is that sense of distrust and uncertainty doesn’t only influence their emotional state it creates a whole sort of chain reaction of problems,” Dr Moss told GovernmentNews.

“It reduces their creativity and flexibility so they don’t respond as well to some of the challenges that redundancies create.

“It generally reduces their engagement at work and their motivation and productivity as a consequence.

“They tend to become less cooperative, more altruistic and more defensive. Decision making tends to dissipate as well.”

The bottow line is that a restructure can create inefficiencies, which is the “complete opposite” of what it is supposed to do, Dr Moss said.

A short-sighted approach to management is also partly to blame for post-restructure inefficiencies.

“Managers tend to make a lot worse decisions. Their strategies and plans are much more sensitive to short-term issues, but less relevant to broader implications,” Dr Moss said.

As a consequence, managers continually change their plans from one month to the next, creating inefficiencies throughout the organisation.

“So many of their resources and activities are wasted because they seem to shift strategy from one month to the next.”

Dr Moss said strong and effective management is required to prevent the organisation from crumbling.

He advised managers to provide employees with “a sense of strength and security” and “foster resilience” through long term planning and goal setting.

“Despite the turmoil of the organisation there needs to be some time, whether it is an hour in the day or an hour in the week, where employees are given a chance to really start to focus on broader aspirations and meaningful activities, rather than the more pressing demands," he said.

“The focus on the immediate and pressing needs tends to actually reduce resilience and exacerbate a lot of these problems.

“It sounds counter intuitive or counter productive to talk about long term values when the organisation is under threat, but it is absolutely necessary to create the strength that’s required to cope with the immediate demands.”

Melbourne psychologist a career-change counselling specialist, Meredith Fuller, said employees can also play their part in keeping the organisation afloat.

Fuller said employees should undertake short and long-term planning, break-up their workload into small, manageable tasks and avoid overworking to the point of exhaustion.

“One of the traps is when you start to get really worried about job security, so you start to work excessively long hours,” she said.

“You’re not actually being more efficient or effective. You’re just burning yourself out.”

She said communication with colleagues and managers was key to tackling anxiety and ‘survivors guilt’.

“We need to encourage a culture of communication,” Fuller said.

“It needs to be normalised that it’s perfectly okay for people to feel a little stressed, worried, anxious or intimidated by any transition like this. It’s perfectly natural.”

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