Strategies for saving your job

The following is not a full transcript; for full story, listen to audio.

As the joblessness rate goes up it’s becoming almost commonplace for American workers to consider a plan of action in case they get laid off. But is there a way to be proactive and stave off a layoff?

Cali Yost, blogger for "Fast Company" magazine joins "The Takeaway" to talk about ways to save your job — such as talking to your employer about saving the company money. Yost writes and consults on work and life issues.

Yost starts with this reasoning: "Managers think that if they lay someone off who makes $50,000 they’re going to save $50,000, and actually that’s not true. It’s going to cost them more to let someone go. And that’s why the reseach shows that layoffs tend to be a short-term fix without a lot of long-term profit benefits.

"… the cost of the layoff is anywhere between 150 percent to 250 percent of a person’s salary … going forward … because what happens is there are a lot of associated costs with a layoff that we don’t take into consideration — so for example, you have severance, there’s the payout for vacation, there’s outplacement services, there’s benefits continuation, unemployment insurance premiums … it goes on and on and on, so you really don’t get that immediate savings.

"And the question then becomes … what does a manager do that [addresses] a very real need to manage the labor costs in this recession, and the fact is, there are flexible alternatives to layoffs that allow you to get the benefit of labor cost savings without all of these associated expenses related to layoffs, and that includes reducing schedules and salaries, it includes job sharing, it includes furloughs, it includes adding unpaid vacation days to the year …"

According to Yost, employee morale is another cost that doesn’t get factored in to layoffs.

So if you’re a high seniority, high-salary employee, Yost says your best bet to prevent a layoff is: "To go in and say … ‘I’ll take a 20 percent cut in pay, and let me work with you to try to get this business to recover — here’s how we can work together, and then when it recovers, I’m here to hit the ground running.’"

"The Takeaway" is PRI’s new national morning news program, delivering the news and analysis you need to catch up, start your day, and prepare for what’s ahead. The show is a co-production of WNYC and PRI, in editorial collaboration with the BBC, The New York Times Radio, and WGBH.

More at thetakeaway.org

PRI’s coverage of economic security is supported by the Rockefeller Foundation and its Campaign for American Workers.