With the economy still shaky and inflation high, companies from Microsoft to Apple to ABC’s parent company, Disney, have announced belt tightening in the form of layoffs.
But a new study shows that layoffs are contagious.
It has already been observed that quitting is catchy — that is when one or two employees leave a company, others may follow suit. But research of some 17 million employee records analyzed by human resources company Visier notes that when a company starts terminating employees, even those who survived the layoffs will jump ship on their own.
In fact, the company found there’s a 7.7% higher rate of employees who weren’t terminated quitting in the wake of companywide layoffs.
Andrea Derler, a Visier researcher, tells Business Insider: “If you’re doing layoffs, you might as well add 7% to 8% to your count who are likely to leave as well.”
Some of their reasons can be similar to why quitting becomes a trend. For example, an employee may be stuck with terminated employees’ workload and decide to bail themselves.
A layoff may put an employee under a manager they don’t like, making leaving on one’s own attractive. Further, layoffs are traumatic, and may lead some of those who avoided the ax to fear they’re the next tall tree and leave on their own steam.
A company laying off employees can also send a message about the company’s overall stability, Elena Obukhova, an associate professor of strategy and organization at McGill University, tells the publication. “A layoff … [is] a sign of your company’s solvency or future direction.”
There’s also a matter of “survivor’s guilt”: An employee may just feel bad their colleagues got pink slips, but they didn’t, and hand in their resignation.
Survey questions, methodology and results have not been verified or endorsed by ABC News or The Walt Disney Company.