LifeLabs Learning trains managers, execs, and teams at 1,000+ amazing companies in skills that are essential in times of uncertainty (like leadership, behaviors of inclusion, adaptivity & resilience). Below is a guide that captures our favorite tips, research, and resources for leading and thriving in our new normal, co-created with our People Ops and exec community. Have questions? Need training? 

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The People Leader Inspiration: When the Apollo 13 oxygen tank failed and the lunar module was in danger of not returning to earth, Gene Kranz, the lead flight director overheard people saying that this could be the worst disaster NASA had ever experienced—to which he is rumored to have responded, “With all due respect, I believe this is going to be our finest hour.”

Imagine if we, as people leaders, could make our response to this crisis our finest hour. Imagine if a year or two from now we looked back on this situation and told the stories of how we came together as a team in our companies, our community, as a nation, and as members of this planet.

Short link to this document: lifelabsworksheets.com/resilience

DEI & response to racism guide: lifelabsworksheets.com/DEI

Hybrid & Remote Work guide: lifelabsworksheets.com/remote

Join a LifeLabs Community Working Session: See events 

Continue the conversation by joining our ‘POPs United’ Slack Group: Apply here

As a people leader, it helps to know terms and research on the topic of mental health so you have better conversational capacity around it.  Here are key terms:

• Anxiety vs. stress: anxiety is a feeling of unease typically about an imminent event or something with an uncertain outcome. Stress is a state of mental or emotional strain or tension resulting from adverse or very demanding circumstances. We feel stress when there is more for us to do/decide than we feel we have the resources to handle. Anxiety tends to be more future-focused, while stress is typically present-focused.
• Acute vs. chronic stress: acute stress is an intense, short-term spike in stress in response to a short-term pressure - typically not bad for us and can even be motivating. Chronic stress is a response to an ongoing high-pressure or low resource situation. When stress turns chronic, the human body shifts its response patterns:

• Reduced rational thinking: On the nuts-and-bolts level in the brain, two circuits are involved: The prefrontal cortex (PFC), which is in charge of rational decision-making, and the amygdalae, the emotion-processing part of the brain. During prolonged stress, glucocorticoids, a class of stress hormones, deactivate the PFC and make it less capable. Meanwhile, those same stress hormones make the amygdalae more active, dominating the PFC and its decision-making process and causing hasty action.
• Impulsivity & rigidity: When stress, fear, and anxiety are high, we become more impulsive, less reflective, have tunnel vision, and it becomes harder to factor future consequences into present considerations. Our decisions also become more automatic. Instead of trying something different when a behavior doesn't work, we stick with the usual, but do it more often, louder, or faster.  We are more likely to perceive neutral stimuli as threatening, and individuals prone to aggression even more so.

• Emotional contagion / affect spiraling:

• When companies go through periods of uncertainty, one thing to be careful about is emotional contagion or affect spiraling.  Emotional contagion is the transfer of moods and feelings from one person to another. It happens all the time on a micro-level and is usually harmless, like a baby smiling back at a smiling adult, or a yawn that ripples from one person in the room to another. But at the macro-level, emotional contagion can be dangerous because it can interfere with making sound, logical decisions. Even having a highly anxious manager can lead direct reports to have higher blood pressure.
• Source you can share with leaders: Emotional Contagion in Organizational Life

• Anxiety paradox: Anxiety rises proportionally to how much one tries to avoid thinking about it. Or as Carl Jung put it, “What you resist persists.” Struggling against anxiety can take many forms. People might try to distract themselves by drinking, eating or watching Netflix more than usual. They might repeatedly seek reassurance from others. Or they might obsessively check news streams. Although these ‘safety behaviors’ can help momentarily, they can make anxiety worse in the long run. Avoiding the experience of anxiety almost always backfires. Instead, we’ll need to create opportunities for employees to express and cope with anxiety.
• Mental health impact and awareness at work:

• Mindshare Partners, SAP, and Qualtrics conducted a survey on the prevalence of mental health challenges and stigma in U.S. workplaces. 1,500 participants across for-profit, non-profit, and government sectors. Here are some of the findings:

•  Less than 50% felt mental health was prioritized at their company
•  Less than 50% saw company leaders as advocates
• 60% experienced symptoms of a mental health condition in the last year.
• 50% of millennials and 75% of Gen Zers had left jobs for mental health reasons, compared with 34% of respondents overall - possibly speaking a generational shift in awareness.
• LBGTQ+ folks, Millennials, and Gen Zers were more likely to experience symptoms for longer durations but were also more open to diagnosis, treatment, and talking about it at work.
• Almost half of Black and Latinx respondents had left a job due to mental health reasons compared to 32% of white respondents. (Might speak to an extra burden on Black and Latinx folks who are suffering.)
• When conversations about mental health did occur at work, less than 50% were described as positive.
• Respondents felt least comfortable talking to HR leaders and senior leaders about their mental health.
• The most commonly desired workplace resources for mental health were an open and accepting culture, training, and clearer information and where/who to go to/how to obtain support - in other words, just creating space for mental health awareness and support.

• VUCA: The current C-19 situation is the perfect example of what is known in the military as a ‘VUCA environment’: Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous. In VUCA situations, the only thing you can do is be nimble and remain calm, since there is no known model to follow.
• See shareable Emotion Audit and Coping Plan below:

• Share cadenced/predictable updates - Make sure there is a cadence to when and how employees can expect to receive updates. Even if we don’t know what we don’t know, we can count on the predictability of an update schedule. Be sure updates have acknowledgements of emotion. Have ‘predictability of communication cadence even if uncertainty in content.’
• Establish group sharing outlets - Show employees where they can share their feelings and support one another. This can be a Slack channel, Workplace group, email thread, or virtual meetings. For example, at LifeLabs Learning, we have a Slack channel called #authentic, where anyone can share what is on their mind.
• Create 1-1 support systems - Ask managers to support employees emotionally (not just logistically) and/or offer other 1-1 support systems like external coaching (e.g., Bravely) or internal coaching. For example, at LifeLabs Learning, each team member has a peer ‘Lab Coach,’ responsible for supporting well-being and engagement.  
• Promote counseling services - During onboarding and then on a regular cadence, communicate to employees what resources and benefits are provided for caring for their mental health and how to gain access to these services (e.g., Two Chairs, Modern Health, Lyra).
• Keep and create rituals and routines - In times of uncertainty, rituals and routines are needed more than ever. Make sure to keep all hands meetings, 1-1s, and celebrations consistent. Consider introducing new routines like a daily 15-minute virtual standup.
• Turn leaders into emotion role models - Share the importance of emotional leadership with execs, managers, and influencers. Leaders should model disclosure and vulnerability to position them as strengths and reduce stigma associated with mental health challenges and diagnoses.
• Prepare your people leaders - Work with managers and HRBPs in particular to make sure they feel ready to provide emotional support through normalizing, validating, asking questions, emotional sharing, and knowing when to offer additional resources. Make sure these folks get to meet together as well to give one another support during times of heightened emotional labor.
• Create a well-being task force - Don’t do it all alone! Invite employees to band together and crowdsource resources they can disseminate across the organization.
• Provide employees with a list of ideas - This list can be generated by a task force or a shared Google doc or wiki. (See list of ideas below.)

Share tips with all employees, with additional guidance for managers, execs, and HRBPs on how to provide coaching and additional support.

To do: Select the tips that best match your culture (bonus: crowdsource more at your company or create a task force) and share these on a regular basis and/or in a central spot.

Bonus: Here is a recording and chat transcript of our community working session on March 19 2020 on managing anxiety and increasing employee resilience. And a recording of our session on March 26 2020

• Strengthen self-care - During these anxiety-provoking times, it’s important to remember research-backed tried-and-true anxiety prevention and reduction strategies. Get adequate sleep, exercise regularly, practice mindfulness, spend time in nature, employ relaxation techniques, and consider seeing a therapist.
• Deepen or broaden social ties - Loneliness can be bad for our health and even hinder our immune system function. There are two ways to overcome loneliness: nurture your existing relationships or form new ones. Reflect on your current state of social health and then take one (digital) action to deepen it. For example, get in touch with a friend or family member you haven’t spoken with in a while or join a virtual event to meet new people.
• Moderate your media consumption - Research shows that media consumption increases, rather than decreases stress. In the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Silver and collaborators found that increased television exposure was associated with post-traumatic stress and cardiovascular problems three years later. In another study, the same team found that after the Boston Marathon bombings in 2013, people who reported the highest media exposure also reported higher levels of acute stress than those who were actually there. Baruch Fischhoff, a psychologist and decision scientist at Carnegie Mellon University, recommends we limit your coronavirus media consumption to 10 minutes a day. “The more we can feel like we are in control, the calmer we’ll be,” he said. “And one thing you can control is your media intake.” See also the LifeLabs article “no news naked”
• Balance your positive news inputs - Find sources of good news by asking friends, family, and coworkers what’s going well. You can even look for positive news online (e.g., the humpback whale population is bouncing back!). A good one is Reddit uplifting news. (Source: another good one from Diane Sadowski-Joseph!)
• Practice self-compassion - Put your left hand on your right shoulder. Close your eyes and tell yourself, “This is hard, but I’m doing the best I can.” When you notice your inner critic rearing its head, try talking to yourself as you would talk to a friend.  Research shows that being overly hard on yourself only compounds stress and is actually counterproductive when trying to change behavior in the first place.  (Source: Center for Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction. Learn more about a practice called Mindful Self-Compassion here.)
• Try parasympathetic breathing - stop what you’re doing and take three conscious breaths, synching up with this animation (Source: MBSR Institute).
• Describe the sensations - When waves of Coronavirus anxiety show up, notice and describe the experience to yourself or others without judgment.  Name, describe, and allow your anxious thoughts, feelings, and physical sensations.  (Source: ACT therapy)
• Use thinking words - Create healthy distance and reduce the ‘realness’ of negative emotions by describing your thoughts. For example, instead of saying, “I am worried,” try saying, “I am thinking I am worried.” (Source: ACT therapy)
• Give your anxiety a silly name - Giving your anxiety a name helps you become aware when it is present and creates some distance from it without denying it. For example, you might call your anxiety, “Banana,” and say, “Listen here, Banana! I see you. Thanks for your help, but I’m all good right now." (Source: ACT therapy)
• Schedule “worry time” - Worrying is different than allowing your feelings to be present.  Reduce time given to worrisome thinking by scheduling 10 minutes for worry time in the morning (bonus - write down what you are worried about). Then, when you start to worry throughout the day you can think, "I already worried about that today! Will worrying about it more be useful?” Worrying is often like a rocking chair. It gives you something to do but doesn’t get you anywhere. (Source: CBT therapy)
• Take the middle path - Chronic worry is unhealthy and unproductive but pretending everything is fine in times of true crisis isn’t constructive either. Invite your brain to take the middle path between worry and alertness.  Bonus: draw it!
• Draw two ‘control’ circles - Illustrate a circle that represents what you can control and what you can’t. Ask: “what is within my scope of influence?” Research suggests people are more resilient when they focus on things they can do to move forward rather than focusing on what they can’t control. A study during the 2009 H1N1 pandemic showed that people who had a harder time accepting the uncertainty of the situation were more likely to experience elevated anxiety. So, knowing our circles of influence can help. (Source: ACT therapy)
• Create a gratitude habit - Practicing gratitude is one of the most brain-friendly habits for overall well-being, especially in times of stress. Simply write down or share 3 good things (or even just one!) you are grateful for every evening.
• Do one-minute of kindness - Each day, think of one thing you can do to be kind to someone. For example, send an email with a genuine compliment or expression of gratitude. Doing something kind for others benefits the giver and can counter stress and uncertainty.
• Do a fitness challenge - Invite coworkers and/or friends to do a fitness challenge together over video or just report back your results. For example, last year many of us at LifeLabs Learning did the Bring Sally Up pushup challenge! (Source: Ashley Schwedt)
• Look at photos of animals - Spend more time with your animal friends if you have them, and when in doubt, simply look up images of animals! Our favorite search term: “unlikely friendships.”
• Step outside or get a plant - Research in the area of biophilia shows strong results for the hard-wired, calming effect of simply looking at nature.
• Practice expressive writing - One of the best-researched techniques for healing and resilience is the simple practice of writing about your feelings and stressful experiences. Researcher James Pennebaker and his team found that writing for just 15 minutes for 4 days led individuals with traumatic life experiences to experience a boost to their immune systems, resulting in fewer clinic visits. Expressive writing even led individuals who were unemployed to find jobs at much higher rates than individuals who were in the control group.

• Breathe2Relax: Smartphone app with instructions and exercises in ‘diaphragmatic breathing,’  a well-researched stress management skill.
• Pacifica: Provides guided deep breathing and muscle relaxation exercises, daily antianxiety experiments, and tools including a mood tracker. Recording your own thoughts can help you understand your thinking patterns and recognize possible anxiety triggers.
• GPS for the Soul: Created by Arianna Huffington and Deepak Chopra. Uses biofeedback to help you determine your level of stress, and helps you manage stress with meditation tools that include calming pictures and music.
• Happify: A brain-training app based on research showing that some types of activity can help you combat negativity, anxiety, and stress while fostering gratitude and empathy.
• Calm: With the mission to make the world healthier and happier, this app provides simple instruction in meditation and mindfulness.  They offer programs focused on different topics, including reducing anxiety, improving sleep, increasing relaxation, and much more. A free trial is available with additional sessions available by subscription.
• Headspace: “A gym membership for the mind." It provides a series of guided meditation sessions and mindfulness training. A free trial is available.
• Personal Zen: Developed with a professor of psychology and neuroscience, a series of games based on clinical findings about methods for reducing anxiety levels.
• My Mood Tracker: Knowledge is power. Once you become more aware of what you're feeling when, you can begin figuring out links between life events and cycles and your moods, which in turn will help you manage (and work around) your moods.
• Squeeze and Shake: A fun app to let you take out frustrations on a digital rubber duck.
• Pay It Forward: Encourages a daily act of kindness - a proven stress reducer - with a list of suggestions as well as connection to a community of people who are committed to the principles of paying it forward.
• VirusAnxiety.com: This website is exactly what it sounds like and offers various free resources.

Aside from creating company-wide and team-wide resources, we have to provide 1-1 support. Below is a framework we’ve developed at LifeLabs Learning based on research in neuroscience and motivation. Use it to just get a pulse check on how people are feeling or coach people to make small but meaningful adjustments.Please feel free to use it and share it with other leaders:

In a LifeLabs exec community working session, we asked over 100 leaders to share their go-to ‘resetting questions’ - questions that help stop the cognitive spin that so many individuals

and teams are experiencing these days. Resetting questions allow us to break out of fight/flight/freeze mode and re-engage our prefrontal cortex.

Your mission: Pick one question from the list below and use it today.

1. What's the problem we are trying to solve? Let's re-state it.
2. What do we most want to accomplish in the next 30 minutes?
3. What’s the thinking behind that comment/question? Can you share more?
4. Shall we take a quick stretch break?
5. What do we want to ultimately communicate?
6. What's a different way of going about this problem / conversation?
7. What is the MIT (Most Important Thing) for us to talk about?
8. What’s the first question we have to answer?
9. What’s an experiment we can try?
10. Let’s pretend we only had time to answer one question or discuss one point, what would it be?
11. How is everybody doing, scale from 1-10?
12. What is the short-term solution, and what are we doing to set us up for the long-term?
13. What should our decision criteria be?
14. How are our skills/experiences most useful in the current environment?
15. What can we de-prioritize or de-scope?
16. What are the things we can control right now?
17. How should we best go about this conversation?
18. To reframe things, what is good about this problem?  
19. What, if anything, might prevent you from being present today?
20. What’s the best thing you ate recently?

Here is a link to a sharable version.

This section of the guide is designed to help leaders make difficult decisions and handle subsequent conversations as skillfully as possible - with fairness, care, and maximum rebound potential for everyone involved.

Common employee cost cutting options:

• Hiring freeze: a temporary suspension on hiring all or some new roles.
• Raise and/or bonus freeze: a temporary suspension of all raises and/or bonuses.
• Termination for cause: severing employment due to a performance-related issue.

• Common considerations: begin with a 1-3 month performance improvement plan for maximum fairness and clarity; many companies offer severance (typically along with a signed nondisclosure agreement and liability waiver); some companies offer outplacement support.

• Layoff: a temporary separation with the expectation that the job will be offered again in the future if it becomes possible to do so.

• Common considerations: many companies offer severance (typically along with a signed nondisclosure agreement and liability waiver); some companies offer outplacement support.

• Furlough: an alternative to a layoff, typically short-term (a few weeks or months), and maintaining employer sponsored benefits.

• Common considerations: severance pay and outplacement are not typically offered; rotating furloughs are an option to consider (e.g., half of employees go on unpaid leave for 2 weeks while the other half continue working, then switch); local furlough laws vary.

• Reduction in force (RIF): a job elimination that happens because the role no longer exists at the company - this is not a termination for performance issues or a layoff with an expectation of offering the role again in the future.

• Common considerations: many companies offer severance (typically along with a signed nondisclosure agreement and liability waiver); some companies offer outplacement support.

• Pay and/or hours reductions: rather than cutting a job, many companies choose to reduce work hours and/or compensation while maintaining benefits.

• Common considerations: it is best practice to reduce work hours if reducing pay (e.g., 4-day work week, shorter work days, or mandated unpaid leave); use clear criteria for whose hours or pay is cut to prevent discrimination; most common compensation cuts occur for underutilized roles and highly compensated executives; check exempt status employee restrictions before moving forward with any cuts.

• Voluntary attrition and leave programs: 

• Voluntary early retirement (must be truly voluntary to avoid age discrimination).
• Offer of switching to part-time work or taking a leave of absence (be sure to review exempt status employee restrictions).

• Employee reassignment and retraining programs: to reduce the cost of underutilized roles, offer training and role reassignment into areas of the business that need support.

Employee cost cutting trends:

Based on the LifeLabs Learning working sessions, here are the most common trends we are seeing among companies with 50 - 5,000 employees (as of 3/31/20):

• Freeze or slow down hiring (~40%)
• Reduce compensation and/or hours (~20%)
• Institute furloughs or layoffs (~18%)

Steps to take when contemplating employee reductions:

• Determine monthly burn run rate (amount spent on overhead)
• Create scenarios (ranging from best case to worst case) to determine run rate in each case (cash coming in minus cash coming out)
• Calculate cost savings of various people cost reduction options
• Outline pros and cons of the reduction options (e.g., consider costs of offboard, re-hiring, and onboarding vs money saved)
• Determine sources of cash infusions (e.g., PPP loan, SBA loan, personal loan, fundraising, applying for grants, offering to discount amount of outstanding invoices in exchange for immediate payment)
• Reset priorities for the year - outlining your strategy to survive and succeed
• Create a capacity plan - identifying who will own which responsibilities and what priorities will not have sufficient support and need additional staffing
• Create a proposal and share it with stakeholders for feedback and input
• Create your work and/or compensation reduction action plan and communication plan (including the plan for impacted individuals and the ‘survivors’ who are staying at the company and are often neglected during these times).
• Get feedback on the communication plan from stakeholders
• Have managers and leaders practice holding conversations to get more comfortable
• Figure out offboarding and/or reduction logistics (e.g., providing paid FedEx labels or account number for laid off staff to ship back equipment)

Salience and resilience: The way a message is communicated can increase or decrease hardwired stress response circuitry. The way one finds out about bad news can sear itself into long-term memory. As a corollary: When a loved one dies, the way that you hear about the message will stay with you for decades. If the message is shared skillfully, traumatic responses can be reduced.

Get shareable version here.

Sample company-wide messaging:

• A video to Marriott International associates from President and CEO Arne Sorenson
• A message from Airbnb CEO communicating layoffs

Sample 1-1 messaging from managers:

From “A Scripted Layoff” | SHRM:

“Steve, in an effort to reduce costs, we are restructuring our business, and that will result in the elimination of a number of positions in our company. Unfortunately, your position has been selected, and I’m afraid we’re going to have to lay you off. Today will be your last day of work with us, and we have information to share with you regarding your severance package, COBRA, and unemployment insurance. I know this is a lot of information coming at you at once, and I’m so sorry to have to relay this message to you. Before I go any further, I want to see how you’re doing. Are you OK?

Just so you’re aware: about 35 positions are being eliminated throughout the day. Out of respect for the other people involved, I would ask that you say as little as possible today. We would prefer to tell the affected employees ourselves; we want to avoid people hearing about this through the grapevine if we can help it. In addition, I know that some people prefer to leave quietly while others want to say goodbye to a few close friends. We’ll respect whatever decision you make. How do you think you would like to handle that?

Finally, I just want to thank you for all your hard work and dedication for the past two years. You have made it a better place around here, and I’m personally going to miss working with you. Thank you for all you have done for us.”

Tips for 1-1 messaging from managers:

• Be very clear. Do not use hedging language or blur words like “may be eliminated” or “will have to be eliminated.” Comments like these create false hope or make it sound like there is room for negotiation.  
• Focus on them. However difficult this meeting may be for you, it is tougher for the employee. Focus on their feelings rather than shifting focus to how hard this is for you. It’s okay if you get emotional - this is common - but do your best to regain composure (breathe slowly through your nose, drink water).
• Don’t get defensive. Stay calm if the employee expresses anger or frustration. It is not your job to persuade the person that the action is justified. State your case with confidence. If there are open questions or concerns, write them down and let the employee know when you will follow up with more information.
• Represent the company well. Refrain from criticizing or placing blame on the company or organizational leadership.
• Be prepared to handle confusion. Remember that it is normal to have to repeat information for the employee during this type of meeting.
• Acknowledge the employee’s reaction. Allow a few seconds for the information to be absorbed and then proceed. For example, “I know you probably need time to absorb this information.” Or, “I understand how upsetting this is.” If the employee is too upset to proceed, offer to let them take a break before continuing. Avoid saying “I know how you feel,” since everyone’s reaction will be very different.
• Stick to budgeting reasons only. Unless you are moving forward with a termination for cause, when providing an explanation, clarify that the reason for the layoff or furlough is due to budgetary shortages and not due to the employee’s performance, personality, or any other personal factor.
• Offer choice of exit. If possible, ask employees for input regarding when and how to deliver the information to the rest of the company or their team. Know your options and deadlines before you meet.
• Schedule a follow-up. Unless the termination is immediate, schedule a follow-up meeting to formally discuss the work transition plan, get any required forms signed, complete all the items on the Exit Checklist, and discuss whether you may be able to offer time for the employee to interview for other jobs while still employed. Make contact with the employee periodically during the notice period to assess how they are responding emotionally and answer any questions that arise.

Supporting ‘survivors’ (employees who remain):

Supporting the ‘survivors’ (those who remain after layoffs, RIFs, or furloughs) is one of the most overlooked steps. Devoting attention here has a high ROI.

• Hold an AMA session. Immediately after making cuts, hold an Ask Me Anything (AMA) session for all employees to share as much information as possible.

• Pro-tips: Record the session in case anyone misses it and send a summary of key points in writing. Offer the option to share questions in writing vs. only live.

• Make ‘know / don’t know / will know’ statements. Here is what we know, here is what we don’t know, here is when we will know or provide an update. Train leaders to do this well.           (In our workshop for managers and executives on this topic, this tool often gets named as the biggest takeaway.)
• Accept the range of reactions and coping strategies. Keep in mind the Kübler-Ross stages       of grief (see below) and remember that these stages are not linear or the same for every person. Most are a normal part of the coping process. If you fear someone is not coping or might become a danger to themselves or others, see the mental health resources in this guide.

• Share the decision criteria. Employees will want to know why some positions were eliminated/reduced and if they might be impacted in the future. Share your decision criteria and set expectations about when they will be updated.
• Balance loss and hope statements. Acknowledge the sadness of the situation and also make space for looking forward. For example: “This is very much a time of loss. It is also a time to unite around our cause.”
• Offer choice. Reduce the intense sense of fear and uncertainty people feel by offering choices (e.g., hours, projects, goals). At the very least, make salient people’s choice to stay by saying, “We need the group that’s here more than ever. We hope you choose to stay.”
• Reset priorities. Given the reduction in employees, reset org-level, team-level, and individual priorities and definitions of role success. Consider making a stop-start-continue list.
• Design early wins. Give your employees something to celebrate soon and often. Break up projects and goals into very small increments and make progress visible.
• Provide training. If employees have to do more with less and take on new responsibilities, make sure you are setting them up for success by offering the necessary training to handle their new roles well.
• Extract the learning. For projects or responsibilities that are being eliminated, acknowledge the loss that people might be experiencing. Hold a formal wrap-up retro so that team members can celebrate past wins and extract any learning they can apply in the future. (One team we worked with even held mini memorials for eliminated projects.)
• Be sure to provide extra support for leaders:

• Create space for leaders to share emotions. Managers and execs need to ‘cognitively offload’ by sharing their feelings with an appropriate source vs. hiding their feelings. This can happen in a designated Slack channel and ideally also in live interactions like group meetings, 1-1s, and workshops.
• Train leaders. Make sure managers and execs have the necessary training, access to timely information, and resources (e.g., FAQs, templates, access to up) to handle move-forward conversations well and feel as confident and supported as possible during this time. For example, here is a template from the LifeLabs workshop on leading move-forward conversations: lifelabsworksheets.com/moveforward. Use the LifeLabs CAMPS model to focus on moving forward with engagement.

Sample manager script for ‘survivors’ (employees who remain):

“I wanted to follow up regarding the layoffs that took place earlier today in our department. As you may know, two members of our department - Bill and Jan - have been laid off. This was a very hard decision. It was made to help [fill in context and reasoning statements]. Our People Ops team is working with them through this transition so they have as much support as possible.

I know that whenever this happens the first reaction is to feel loss. I feel it too. I know this feeling is also combined with a concern for one’s own position. So, to make sure everyone is fully informed,           I want to share what we know and don’t know, and what the next steps are.

What we don’t know is how long this [economic downturn] will last. But what we know is that there aren’t any other planned layoffs in our department as long as [criteria]. Now more than ever, our shared goal is to set up our team and company for success and [link to mission and future goals].

Each of us left behind has a crucial role to play. Tomorrow we will meet to walk through the revised goals and plan together. I know this is a lot to take in, but I know we can get through this together.      I’m here if you have any questions at all.”

Resources for terminated employees:

See the resources section of this playbook.

LifeLabs Learning organized two People Ops community working sessions on “ripple effects” - the downstream consequences of COVID-19 that we should be anticipating. We asked: what should we already start thinking about and preparing for now?

Over 120 companies contributed. Here is a link to key themes from the sessions. Use these to prioritize your prep and planning efforts or just to get a pulse check of what is on people’s minds.

• Mental health resources:

• Free mental health and wellness resources
• SAMSA Disaster Distress Help: 800-985-5990
• NAMI Helpline: 800-950-6264
• Crisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741741
• National Suicide Prevention Lifeline 800-273-8255

• Employee reductions resources:

• Crisis communication audit / checklist
• Worksheet to help your messaging team: lifelabsworksheets.com/moveforward
• Blog post with 5 tips for doing a RIF right
• Silver Lining is a terrific (free) resource/network for individuals who have been laid off, companies that have had to do layoffs, and companies that are hiring.

• Resources for terminated employees:

• From WayUp: Sample guide 
• From Udacity: If you have recruiters with extra bandwidth, offer their support to help with resumes and/or searching for new jobs.
• From TuneIn: Offer outplacement support (like https://www.slateadvisers.com/)
• From YipitData: Silver Lining helps job seekers and provides community

• Team building and engagement:

• Ideas for social connection at a distance
• Donut is offering 90 days free + free for nonprofits and educational institutions
• Guide to Remote Team Building Activities
• “Netflix party” chrome extension to watch movies with friends/coworkers  
• Online karaoke
• Pictionary with friends
• Employee engagement in distancing article
• Virtual museum tours
• Volunteer from home opportunitiesHow to keep the greater good in mind
• Move from virtual table to virtual table with Remo
• Artly Working: Using improv comedy and acting techniques, virtual workshops by Artly Working helps employees and team be more engaged, creative, and confident at work.

• Fitness resources:

• FightCamp has made all of its workout library free! The special People Ops promo code PEOPLE1ST gets you $100 off in-home equipment.
• List of in-home workouts
• Yoga 30 Day Challenge
• ClassPass: live on-demand workouts you can do from anywhere.
• Studiomix: Free recorded classes on Youtube
• Core40: Free live pilates classes - Instagram, Facebook, YouTube

THIS DOCUMENT IS A WORK IN PROGRESS. WE WILL KEEP ADDING MORE TOOLS AND RESOURCES. IF YOU HAVE QUESTIONS YOU’D LIKE US TO ADDRESS, PLEASE EMAIL ASHLEY@LIFELABSLEARNING.COM