Your Team Survived the Layoff. Now Comes the Worst Part.
How to rebuild trust among those who stayed but aren’t happy
The office is too quiet for a weekday. Half your team is gone. You survived the layoff, but something important died that day.
The colleague who always had your back? Gone. The mentor who helped you grow? Her out-of-office message is now permanent. Your team doesn’t feel like one anymore.
Companies expect people who stayed to feel happy and even grateful. After all, they still have a job. But instead of feeling lucky, you feel sad, worried, and betrayed. These mixed feelings point to something worse: guilt.
This is the reality no executive wants to talk about: The people who kept their jobs often wish they hadn’t. I hear this in one-on-ones and when helping teams rebuild trust after layoffs. Leaders feel this way, too.
Research confirms that this guilt affects everyone, not just regular employees. In a Leadership IQ study, 74% of employees who kept their jobs said their productivity dropped significantly. Another study found that cutting just 1% of a workforce led to a 31% increase in resignations the following year.
Most survivors aren’t celebrating; they’re planning their escape. Layoffs may save money today, but they immediately bankrupt trust. The money your company saved today will need to compensate for the cost when your best people leave.
When Guilt Becomes Your Culture
Before the 1970s, mass layoffs meant a company was failing—and then Jack Welch changed that narrative forever. He eliminated one in four GE employees, transforming downsizing into the go-to strategy for companies that are stuck. Since then, leaders everywhere have adopted this playbook without questioning the long-term damage.
Here’s what actually happens after you announce layoffs:
Job satisfaction drops 41%
Organizational commitment falls 36%
Performance goes down 20%
These numbers might seem temporary, but the damage to your culture takes years to repair.
Sometimes layoffs are necessary. But usually, they’re just easier than fixing what’s broken.
When leaders choose the easy route of cutting people instead of having hard conversations, employees notice. The worst example is Better.com CEO Vishal Garg, who fired 900 employees via Zoom. He even called them lazy and accused employees of “stealing from the company.” He apologized later, but it was too late.
The real damage? The survivors saw exactly how little they mattered.
The way you say farewell to employees shows the remaining employees how much you value them. After all, they could be next.
Survivor’s guilt isn’t just an HR buzzword but a real phenomenon. It causes the same symptoms as post-traumatic stress. The same feelings that affect earthquakes and mass shooting survivors now affect your team. They ask themselves daily: “Why them and not me?” or “When will it happen to me?”
One-third of remaining employees feel guilty about still having a job. They shift from relief to remorse in just days. If you ignore this, it leads to absenteeism, burnout, and eventually quitting. The answer isn’t motivational speeches or pizza parties. Rather, it’s talking openly about the stinky fish—the issues everyone knows and we avoid—before they poison everything else.
5 Steps to Rebuild Trust After a Layoff
1. Be Brutally Honest
When you stay silent, people get worried and make up their own stories. Your team doesn’t want excuses; they want the truth.
Address the layoff immediately. Not next week. Today. Explain clearly why this happened and what it means for the company going forward. Don’t use corporate buzzwords. Your team can tell when you’re not being straight with them.
Own your part. Whether you like it or not, you were involved. Even if you didn’t agree with the layoff, you helped decide who stayed and who didn’t. The worst things you can say are “It wasn’t my fault” or “I had no choice.” Everyone has choices. You made yours. Be honest about why it happened, the role you played, and how you decided who to keep.
Our research shows that open communication is vital for a strong culture. People hate bad news, but they hate misinformation even more. The tone is the message. Acting cheerful during a crisis often backfires.
During the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, BP employees exposed to upbeat messages like “We’ll get through this” stopped trusting their leaders. Likewise, those whose managers said, “This is a disaster, we need your help fixing it,” actually felt more confident. Why? One message was honest, while the other pretended everything was fine.
Don’t try to be the hero. It’s okay to admit you don’t have all the answers. Focus on what you know and when you’ll have more details to share.
2. Honor the Departed
How you treat those leaving shows your true character. Companies welcome new hires with open arms, then turn their backs on those who leave—even when they did nothing wrong.
An analysis of layoff announcements shows that most indirectly blame the victims, citing “wasted time” or “lack of productivity” while claiming everyone is “like family.” Except some family members just got kicked out.
Most companies treat former employees like foes after a layoff. You might lose stock options you almost earned. Your health insurance ends the day you leave. Your email is deactivated before you reach your car. The message is clear: You’re no longer one of us.
Leaders should remember: Their choices affect people’s lives, not just company profit. When Airbnb cut 25% of its workforce, CEO Brian Chesky took responsibility. The company gave at least 14 weeks of severance, let everyone claim their shares even if they weren’t vested, extended health benefits through the year, and created a directory to help people find new jobs. Airbnb did what was right, not just stick to legal requirements. They helped people land, not just leave.
Your survivors are watching closely. They see themselves in every departing colleague. A LinkedIn recommendation costs nothing but means a lot. Silence speaks volumes, and people will quickly create their own narrative.
Hint: Don’t expect to be the hero of the story.
3. Rebuild Trust by Focusing on What Won’t Change
Layoffs create fear and destroy trust among team members.
Losing a job is a traumatic event. It harms people’s self-esteem, reputation, and family life. According to Edelman’s Trust Barometer, more and more people worry about losing their jobs. The report we’re facing a “Crisis of Grievance”—people feel that the actions of businesses and governments are working against us.
Employees expect companies to do more: upskill them, provide better work conditions, and have a positive impact on society. Overall, they want businesses to show empathy.
Yet most leaders obsess over promising a better future rather than stabilizing the present. They focus on change when they should highlight what will stay the same.
Research from the Academy of Management found something surprising: Emphasizing what’s NOT changing reduces anxiety more than painting an exciting future. Your team just lost colleagues and friends. When anxiety is high, people need stability, not more uncertainty.
Remind your team why they’re here. Why do we work together? What difference do we want to make? Focus on the work that matters. Celebrate what you’ve accomplished and build on what you still have before you start planning what’s next. To move forward, people need to understand the loss. They need a new narrative that bridges life before the layoff and life after.
4. Eliminate Work, Not Just Workers
Here’s what companies don’t want to admit: They often cut people but keep the same workload. Survivors inherit impossible workloads while the real problems remain unfixed.
I’ve seen this pattern destroy teams. I worked at ad agencies where layoffs were driven by low billability rates. Management’s solution? Cut staff. But here’s what they didn’t fix: pro-bono projects that were eating up resources to boost reputation. New clients won by slashing fees. Managers who said yes to out-of-scope work because they didn’t want to have tough conversations with clients.
The employees weren’t idle; many were working for free. After the layoffs? The survivors inherited even more unpaid work. The real problem never got fixed.
Practice ruthless deprioritization. Every new priority demands that you officially downgrade or eliminate something else. Productivity has limits. Instead of trying to do more with fewer resources, focus on what truly matters.
You can’t cut 20% of your team and expect to keep the workload intact. Customer service can’t be optimized without consequences. You can’t expect people to innovate when they’re swamped and trying to survive. Either you deprioritize work or you lose your people.
5. Lead Forward Despite the Guilt
Managers feel guilty, too. You worked with these people for years. You made the list. You delivered the news. Now your team sees you as both survivor and executioner.
Layoffs hurt team members, but they also hurt managers. The emotional toil is heavy. Some managers overcompensate with kindness, walking on eggshells. Others become tougher, demanding more from exhausted teams. Neither approach works.
Research shows that visible, approachable leaders reduce the likelihood of a drop in productivity by 70% after layoffs. However, visibility means acknowledging the reality, not modeling toxic positivity. Hiding doesn’t help, but showing up without a purpose doesn’t work either. Be there for a reason. Check in with people. Review workloads to make sure they’re sensible. Protect your team from unnecessary pressure from above.
Take care of yourself so you can help others. Your stress makes your team more anxious. Take meaningful breaks. Remember the mission that survives beyond personnel changes. Provide training that shows you’re investing in those who stayed. In one-on-ones, ask people how they’re doing. Don’t judge. Just listen and pay attention to what connects with your own experience.
Your team needs you to be steady, not perfect. They need you to be present, not cheerful. They need you to be human, not a hero.
A New Beginning
Layoffs break a fundamental contract: Do good work and you’ll keep your job. That trust doesn’t return on its own. It’s like starting over, or even worse. You’re basically launching a new team with traumatized members.
Rebuilding trust means leaders need to acknowledge the trauma, remove unnecessary work, and prove through their actions that survivors aren’t just next in line. Your remaining employees don’t feel lucky or grateful. They’re calculating their next move.
Companies that do well after layoffs don’t pretend that nothing happened. They rebuild trust deliberately. They understand that people didn’t choose to stay—they just weren’t let go. Now you need to work hard to show them that staying is worth it.
The question isn’t whether your people will recover. It’s whether they’ll still work as a team when they do.
Need help rebuilding trust in your team? Schedule a free consultation call
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