Analysis: Cigna Is Getting It Right

Organizations are wise to engage their workers and help them tackle survivor guilt and other woes

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Am I surprised an organization like Cigna devotes resources to helping employees relieve their survivor guilt and other troubles? Not at all. In fact, such help is part of a broader trend toward engagement as a whole. Smart businesspeople are looking to gain the interest and enthusiasm of employees, customers, and business partners who may feel shell-shocked or alienated because of layoffs, declines in business, and a generally dreary economic outlook.

For example, like nearly everyone in the working world, Mary Peterson, CEO of Retail Jewelers Organization, has come to expect less engagement over the past year from the more than 800 independent jewelers she works with. Fear of the stalled economy continues to keep potential shoppers at bay, which means retailers across the country—from giants like Best Buy all the way down to locally owned stores—are being forced to whittle down their workforces again in the first months of 2009.

It's not just the unemployed who are paying the price. Job losses are taking a serious toll on the layoff survivors and the organizations they still work for. A recent Accenture (ACN) study found 66% of managers believe economic concerns are distracting employees and hampering productivity. After the last big recession in the early 1990s organizational psychologists confirmed what managers always suspected—layoff survivors are less engaged, less productive, and absent more often than before they saw the ax dropped on their work pals.

Survivors' guilt describes the syndrome infecting "the lucky ones," who escape layoffs when friends and peers don't, as well as the managers who served as executioners of job cuts. Uncomfortable questions such as "Why them and not me?" burden survivors. They are supposed to feel lucky to have a job, friends and family are quick to remind them, which only heaps on the guilt at the thought of colleagues who are not so lucky. These pangs of remorse and murmurs of self-loathing don't make them work harder or cherish their jobs more. Guilt diminishes their performance and causes them to retract mentally from their duties.

So when Mary Peterson began preparing for Retail Jewelers Organization 2009 seminar, she expected to see that disengagement quantified by lower attendance due to the economy and emotional state of many of her retailers. But Peterson was wrong. "Instead," she says, "we had above average attendance…because of the need of our retailers to feel supported and revitalized by one another." Peterson's observation underscores the point that all people—even über-independent small business owners—need social support to remain engaged and productive. While it might be clear to managers across the globe that disengagement is a productivity problem, few understand that emotional support is the cure.

With co-workers and friends—an employee's typical support network—coming and going daily, managers must fill the void of emotional support for their employees. Even though most managers today are enlightened enough to reject the outdated notion that emotions are something to be avoided at work, they often lack the skills to provide adequate emotional support. To compensate, managers either make themselves believe they don't have time to "coddle" employees—reasoning that employees are adults who should be able to cope with their own issues. Or they unconsciously tune out, or flat-out ignore, employees' emotions. Managers know that by acknowledging employee's emotions, they run a serious risk of striking up an uncomfortable conversation they aren't prepared to handle.

Whatever the excuse, the outcome is the same: disengaged and unproductive employees. Fortunately, there are strategies that will help you mitigate the damage caused by survivor guilt in your organization:

1. Get Comfortable with Your Emotions. It's inevitable that dealing with other people's feelings of tension and remorse will undoubtedly arouse awkward emotions in you, too. To provide support effectively, you need to get a firm grip on your own emotions. In the moment, remind yourself to listen and breathe. It might sound simplistic, but think about how often you try to swoop in and save the day before your employees have a chance to finish their thoughts. While listening, focus on taking deep, even-paced breaths. This will relax you as well as give your mouth something to do besides haphazardly spilling words.

2. Set a Positive Tone. If you are noticeably tense, so, too, will be your people. Try to exude confidence, but make sure it's real. A keen lie detector comes standard with everybody's mental machinery, so if you're faking confidence, your people will know it. They will either sense your insincerity, or—as Herbert Hoover learned when he insisted right up until he was voted out of office that "prosperity is right around the corner"—people will think you've simply lost touch with reality.

Instead, take a couple of minutes at the start of each day to think of a few things that are going right, and jot them down on a piece of scratch paper or set an electronic reminder on your e-mail calendar. Then glance at those things a couple of times throughout the day to keep from catastrophizing and spreading anxiety.

3. When You Care, Show It. The tendency for many leaders in times like these is to "bear down on the tasks at hand," because that kind of perseverance and resilience has been a key to your success. You've never been one to back down from a challenge, so you toughen up during tough times. This is a fantastic character trait. However, don't let that narrow focus on tasks end up alienating the people you count on. These are tough personal times for a lot of your people, and by simply acknowledging that you understand what they are going through, you will help tremendously to calm them.

Even if the economy turns around sooner than expected, the psychological damage to employees, business owners, and prospective customers right now will leave them throbbing with an emotional hangover for some time to come. The disengagement won't just disappear when job losses do. Providing the necessary emotional support now will not only help survival but will also poise organizations for a speedy recovery when brighter days return.

Nick Tasler is the director of research and development for TalentSmart, a global think tank and consultancy that serves more than 75% of Fortune 500 corporations. He's the author of The Impulse Factor: An Innovative Approach to Better Decision Making.