Books about Downsized from Amazon.com

Help your downsized workforce bounce back

Layoffs make the business pages, even the front pages, of our newspapers with frightening regularity. And massive downsizing continues to reshape the face of American business. But what about those who remain behind? Healing the Wounds provides an antidote to the widespread malaise on the American business scene left in the wake of workforce reductions. Drawing on case studies and original research, David M. Noer--an expert frequently quoted in major media such as The Wall Street Journal and Fortune--provides executives, human resource professionals, managers, and consultants with an original model and clear guidelines for revitalizing downsized organizations.

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If you've ever been fired, you're in good company That's what actress and writer Annabelle Gurwitch discovered when she was fired by her idol Woody Allen, who added, "You look retarded " In confiding her tale of woe to others, she realized there is a world of people out there with similar laugh-out-loud experiences. How did Bob Saget learn he was being phased out of his job on The Morning Program? "One day I showed up and my hosting chair was gone!"

A collection of anecdotes from people who've all gotten the ax, the boot, or been canned at some point in their lives, Fired! boasts an all-star cast from Tim Allen to Jeff Garlin and features contributions from people all over the country. Uproariously funny and refreshingly true, this book proves it's not the bounce that counts, it's the bounce back..
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If you've ever been fired, you're in good company That's what actress and writer Annabelle Gurwitch discovered when she was fired by her idol Woody Allen ("You look retarded"). She confided her tale of woe to her friend Felicity Huffman, who made Annabelle laugh with her own stories. Annabelle realized that there was a world of people out there waiting to laugh at the experience that virtually everyone shares, and she began to collect stories of being fired from friends and colleagues. Soon she was contributing regular "Fired!" segments to Day to Day on NPR and gathering friends to appear with her in sold-out performances of Fired! in Los Angeles and New York. Fired!, her documentary film inspired by these stories, comes out in 2006.

This book is a collection of hilarious but true tales from people who've all gotten the ax, the boot, or been canned at some point in their lives. In "That's a Fact," Andy Borowitz tells the story of being fired as a writer for the television sitcom The Facts of Life after being informed that he just didn't "get" Tootie. "Take that hanger off your head, you idiot!" were the last words Jeff Garlin heard before being fired from Spec's Music store after only one day on the job, just one of the many firings he recounts in "That Garlin Boy." In "Jimmy the Idiot," Dana Gould sums up his firing from the cast of the sitcom Working that led him to become a producer of The Simpsons: "In the second episode, I was a math genius, in the third -- a motocross racer, and in the fourth episode I was replaced by a chimp, but nobody noticed." In "Poor Judgment," Illeana Douglas tells about being fired after a few hours of working as a coat check girl: "How is it possible to be fired from hanging coats? I have arms. I know what coats are. I don't come home and throw my coat on the floor. I hang it in a closet. I have experience." How did Bob Saget find out he was being phased out of his job on The Morning Program? "One day I showed up and my hosting chair was gone!"

With an all-star cast from Tim Allen to Morgan Spurlock, from Anne Meara to David Cross, and contributions from people from all over the country, this book proves it's not the bounce that counts, it's the bounce back..
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Healing the Downsized Organization is for managers and employees who must make sense of dramatically changed workplaces after reengineering, restructuring, or downsizing Here are "best practices" from those who are successfully reinventing their organizations and re-creating healthy workplaces. Documented examples from executives, managers, and employees who have bounced back from this challenge reveal how they minimized pain during downsizing and discovered promising possibilities for changed employer-employee relationships.

Dramatic profiles of four organizations--representing manufacturing, media journalism, education, and health care--provide lessons you can practice today, whether downsizing is unfolding now or whether it looms in the future. From interviews with CEOs, managers, and employees, you will understand how individuals at all levels have handled the tension between personal and organizational goals, managed the human struggles, and achieved victories as they cut costs and redeployed resources to face competition or changing market conditions.

You will learn how these companies and individuals coped with downsizing, including:

         ¸ how "survivors" regained momentum, focus, and job satisfaction after downsizing
         ¸ what kinds of company-employee interactions allowed trust to be rebuilt
         ¸ how managers succeeded in balancing the concerns of those who left and those who stayed
         ¸ ways to be an effective leader in the transitional period
         ¸ approaches to forge a new employer-employee social contract for the emerging workplace

Healing the Downsized Organization is the recovery book for the downsizing of America.


From the Hardcover edition..
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During the mid-1990s, 1 in 16 workers were displaced by downsizing, reorganization, or corporate mergers and acquisitions. Ruth Luban, a counselor who specializes in recovery from job loss, recognizes that leaving the workforce causes not only a loss of income, but also of identity, structure, and community. Her step-by-step program addresses these problems and explains how to work through them. Using case studies, exercises, and informative sidebars, she identifies the five emotional stages of job loss:

• On the Brink
• Letting Go
• In the Wilderness
• Seeing the Beacon
• In the New Land

Luban shows how to move through the emotional upheaval of job loss and return to the workforce with a sense of control and direction..
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The economy is booming, yet healthy, profitable companies continue to lay off hundreds of thousands of employees and downsizing has become a permanent part of the landscape of corporate America. In Disconnected, acclaimed journalist Barbara Rudolph puts a human face on this new economic reality, through intimate portraits of six people whose lives were irrevocably changed when they lost their jobs at AT&T.

When they were cut loose from the corporate fold at AT&T -- an American icon that once promised lifetime job security and claimed the unquestioning allegiance of its employees -- these six people made a difficult transition from the old world of work to the new one. Rudolph takes us inside the lives of Maggie, a feisty telephone operator whose job was made obsolete by technology; Tom, a brilliant executive who survived unscathed through childhood polio and the Vietnam War, but never fulfilled his early promise; Vince, a soft-spoken manager, son of the first black general counsel at GM, who found strength in his father's legacy; Barbara, a self-sufficient salesperson who learned to move on; Larry, a blunt-speaking, rumpled-looking Bell Labs engineer, who was bolstered by early fame; and Kyle, a strategist who discovered how to land on his feet and look out for himself.

These are moving tales of resilience and triumph, terror and redemption. With empathy and a reporter's instinct for telling detail, Rudolph eloquently portrays the full impact of downsizing on her individual subjects and their families. Each struggled to reclaim a sense of self in the wake of this loss. Each emerged with radically different notions of loyalty, commitment, and personal responsibility.

Many of us have made this journey; many others will. Through these six lives, Rudolph sheds new light on the connection between work and identity, between who we are and what we do. What does it mean today to be a company man or woman in an environment defined by bald individualism and emotional detachment? And most important, how do we find security and meaning in the unmapped territory of the new world of work? The people who survive share something precious, Rudolph concludes: "They have come to comprehend their value, independent of their corporate identity. They have claimed their personal dignity.".
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