How to Negotiate Your Job Back

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What did we learn from the 2008 economic meltdown?

"You asked me to tell you personally," began the chair of the litigation department. "We're laying you off."

I tried to stop the tears. I'd trained myself for 12 lawyerly years not to show that damning female emotion — sadness. I was a no-cry ninja.

It was 1993 and we were in a recession. Not one nearly as bad as today's, but when you're being laid off you don't much care whether you're one in a million or one of several million. Your own little economic empire is collapsing.

I might have been the 'Queen of Conflict Escalation' and tough as nails, but now I was crying hard and the last thing on my mind was negotiation strategy and tactics.

But that was then and this is now. Today, with rising unemployment and uncertainty of unprecedented levels, it's time we learned how to negotiate our jobs back.

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Courtney Wojan, chief financial officer of the international consulting firm Kaye Bassman in 2009, saved more than half of her financial department employees from layoffs that year despite sweeping company cut backs.

"We saw the writing on the wall toward the end of 2008," said Wojan at the time. "I brought my team together and told them we could save most of the department's jobs if we were willing to work harder for less money. Everyone took a temporary 10% pay cut, gave up vacations and deferred bonuses." Although Wojan was eventually required to lay off nearly half her staff, she called the team effort to save jobs a success.

"We lost some people, but we saved half the department by coming together as a community," Wojan confided.

But what about those Kaye Bassman employees who were laid off? Was there anything they might have done to save their jobs?

Fight or flight? Neither.

One young public relations maven in Los Angeles responded to her termination conversation amidst the 2008 meltdown by refusing to be fired.

"I'd never lost a job before," Lindsey Carnett, now CEO of Marketing Maven Public Relations in Los Angeles, said at the time. But there she was, sitting in the CEO's office being told that her services were no longer needed. And yes, she was crying. But she was doing something in addition to that. She was negotiating her job back.

"[As] I was wiping tears from my face, I was thinking, 'This is crazy, I'm making major money for this firm. This CEO must not be in the loop. You don't fire someone who's making lots more money for the firm than she's being paid.'"

Our propensity to tear up hasn't changed but our ability to negotiate through those tears has.

"The CEO was about to tell me to pack up my desk and turn in my key-card when I put the brakes on the conversation," Carnett said.

"You can't be firing me," she told her employer.

"'Take a few days off,'" the CEO finally said, "Then let's finish this conversation."

She didn't do what many of us might have done — consumed an entire sheet cake, for instance. Instead, she became her own PR agent.

"I searched my email for client testimonials. I gathered the best work I'd done — PowerPoint presentations that landed new clients or PR event flyers that retained old ones. I calculated just how much money I'd made for the company and put together the records that proved it."

In fact, she was doing what all good negotiators do. She was gathering evidence of her market value. When she returned to work after a long weekend, she was not only ready to negotiate her job back, she'd convinced herself that she was being seriously under-compensated.

Unless everyone is being laid off because the factory, firm or business is being physically relocated overseas, the question for employees is not whether there will be layoffs but whether they'll become one of today's 16 million jobless.

Wojan and employment mediator Eleanor Barr have the same answer to this question: Be prepared to negotiate job retention before you see the writing on the wall. "You're much less subject to the 'fight or flight' response if you've planned ahead," explained Barr.

When asked who escaped the ax, Wojan said: "those employees who could do more than their own job. When the company's on the rocks you retain the people who can perform as many of the operation's necessary functions as possible."

That requires advance planning. "If you see an opportunity to learn the basics of someone else's job," Wojan continued, "you're not only more valuable in your own position, you make yourself indispensable at cut-back time."

Although Barr views advance planning as essential, she cites good workplace relationships as the most important item in anyone's layoff avoidance kit.

"If you can stand in your supervisor's shoes," Barr says, "you're in a far better position to know what they need. And if you know what they need, you can present yourself — and your continued employment — as the solution."

Plus, "it's difficult to fire someone you like," Barr says. "If you've got a choice, it's far easier to terminate someone you don't."

As for Carnett, her market research convinced her that she could make much more money by starting her own agency. "If the CEO didn't realize my value to the firm," explains Carnett, "I wondered what other assets and opportunities she was overlooking." When given the good news that she wouldn't be laid off, Carnett expressed gratitude and promptly resigned, telling her boss she hoped they'd work together as colleagues someday.

And that is not simply avoiding a layoff, but negotiating your future.