Nobody should face a layoff alone

Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Amazing. Well, thank you so much for that. At Well Transitioned, we help organizations face a very difficult time in their lives. and that is really when they have to perform reductions in force. it's it's a very difficult time for them. and it's a very difficult time for those that are receiving the news. And our organization is here to help those organizations perform this task in a way that that shows care to the people that are being affected and it does it with dignity, which is really important. So we help organizations with the planning and the execution part of a layoff, and then we also help them support the people that are affected after the fact.

Yes, and I would love if I can, I I would love to share that story, if you will. So way back in the beginning of my career, I helped an organization start their start start from the ground up. And a part of that process was to hire, train and really support their employees that were coming in. I had just moved to this state. and these folks that I had hired, they'd become they'd become my family, they became my friends, they became my close acquaintances, if you will, especially spending so much time with them. Fast forward two two years, I was tapped on the shoulder one morning, and I was asked to go to the the office where all those people sit, and I was asked to follow this list and tap each one on the shoulder and escort them into a room where they would be laid off. needless to say, I did not want to do that task, but I I had to help the organization. So I performed that task, tapped folks on the shoulder, escorted them to the room, and it was devastating for me. It was completely devastating. at the end of it all, you had a whole bunch of people, 90 people sitting in a parking lot. They were outside in the parking lot crying, speaking to the news. they did not know what to do, they did not have any support at all. And when I went out there to go, you know, see how folks were doing and giving them hugs, I I realized that as an organization we had made a mistake, we had done everything well around planning. making sure that we're legally compliant, ensuring that the severance packages are all in order. and what I realized is that the organization did a very poor job in thinking about how do we support these people after they leave. It just wasn't a thought for them at all. and it actually caught them off guard. and ever since that day, 20. Plus years ago, 28 years ago, to be quite honest. this has weighed very heavily on me. fast forward throughout the years, I too have been a part of a couple of layoffs. and I know and I knew exactly how it felt not to have support after. how do you tell your family, right? How do you how do you explain that change to your future employer? how do you survive with your finances? There's just so many things. and I really wish that I had this the support that I needed. And that became the birth of well well transitioned.

You know, I think that there's a culture in the United States of organizations doing an amazing job with onboarding, like like you mentioned, right? You can go out to LinkedIn and Career Builder and you can just type in the word onboarding and you will see positions specifically for that task. And that's a beautiful thing, right? And then the organization, after you're onboarded, they bring you into their culture and they want you to engage and build relationships and And and really connect with the people that are in the office, right? So that you're considered a team player, you're considered collaborative, you're considered all these things. Then what happens at the end of the life cycle is it's time to let you go. And there could be many reasons for that. But at the end of the day, Well Transitioned firmly believes the reason for you to let them go doesn't matter. You need to support them, no matter what the reason is to let them go, right? So if you're performing a layoff, you need to provide support to that person. You did such an amazing job ensuring that they were so well onboarded. And now we're dropping the ball with the offboarding, right? Right. So what we do here is we assign a coach from the very first hour. The very first hour that someone understands and hears that they are going to be let go, a coach will immediately reach out to them, ask them, ask them how they're doing, and let them know that they are here to support them. And then that coach remains with them through the entire journey until they land their next role. very different from other organizations like mine. Other organizations will just give you a short amount of time or six weeks, 12 weeks. And then after that time is up, your time is up, whether you have a job or not. and that's not support, right? to have true support, you need someone to be by your side for the entire journey. and that's what we we do here. So yeah.

I love that question. So we work with two types of CHROs. We work with the CHRO that's already established in the organization. And then we also work with CHROs that are fractional, meaning that they that they work with many organizations. And it starts with a simple conversation, right? We want to understand where the organization wants to go, where they are now. And then we bridge that gap with humanity, with care, right? and that's the important part. And then we support the CHRO as well. We not only protect the mental wellness of the person being impacted, we also protect the mental wellness of the person delivering the news. And I think that that makes us special in in the market. I can't tell you how many CHROs have told us, thank you so much for supporting me. During this journey, although this journey was not easy, you made it easier for me, right? and I think that that's that that's really special about well well transitioned. At the end of the day, at Well Transitioned, what we care about is protecting the mental wellness of the people that are going through this, whether they're delivering the news or whether they're impacted by the news. And the benefit of that is that it has a lot of great benefits for the organization. As you know, when Someone is laid off, there's two routes that they can take. They can go the angry route, right? I'm very upset with the organization. I'm going to sue them. Or they go the tragic route. They feel a lot of pain, a lot of hurt. Some of them take it with resilience and handle it very well. That number is far less. so The benefits to the organization is that when that organization shows care. To the person that's being impacted, it helps that organization mitigate a lot of risks that they may have, right? So if an organ, if a person wants to sue or file some type of report with the EEOC, when an organization demonstrates that they care about the person that's being laid off or that's being let go, all of those types of risks that the organization holds tends to reduce. Because it's not just a blanket, I don't care about you, leave. We really care about you. We're here to help support you during your next journey.

That's an excellent question and I'll say yes and no. I would have arrived here faster, that's what I would say, right? I think that when we first started, our scope was to handle a lot more than what we handle now. and that creates a lot of friction and a lot more work. And it's taken our organization a few years to establish itself with where we are today. So the only thing that I would change is really just getting very specific on what the offering is, very finite, and ensuring that it works for the market.

So my plan for the next twelve or twenty four months is to really help the market right now. In in the United States, layoffs right now are running rampant. There are so many organizations that are laying off every single day. and the job market is not very good in the United States right now. if you've seen the last job reports, it's scary. And a lot of the numbers out there are quite false, right? I think the problem is much worse than people see today, right? So for me, for the next couple of years, it's to ensure that this organization is helping as many organizations as possible so that we can really make an impact in in helping the organization protect its reputation and then also helping the people that are impacted land their next role.

Absolutely. I think that My message and my communication is mostly to HR people. HR folks get into the HR profession because they care about people, because they truly want to make a difference in people's lives. they want to make them successful. That's why HR people have come into have stepped into the role that they're in. they're there to protect the organization, of course. but at the end of the day, I think the message that I want to really communicate to organizations and to HR folks is do not do not let your people go without providing them support. I think that they would appreciate the CHROs if they were to be fired or laid off, or or the whatever the case might be, that they would appreciate the support. Everyone should get that type of support, no matter what the issue is in the organization, right? If the person is being let go or being laid off because they weren't successful in their role, everyone holds sort of a Everyone holds a piece of that, if you will, right? Did the organization not set that person up for success with their training and their onboarding programs and their support, right? or maybe they hired the wrong person and that person, there was no way that that person could perform. But at the end of the day, we should support every single person that we've spent so much money onboarding. it's time to support them with offboarding as well. And many organizations in the United States know this and they're already doing it. that's why this industry exists. It's existed for years. but I think that more organizations need to step into this space.

Excellent. They can go to welltransitioned.co or you can send us an email directly at hello at welltransitioned.co. and you can also find us on LinkedIn and all of the social channels.

Thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it.