By Sue Bengtson. Originally published in SEEK Research Report.
Your boss calls you into the meeting room at the end of the day and hands you a piece of paper with ten of your colleagues’ names on it. He tells you that the company is downsizing—it is up to you to deliver the bad news.
For human resource (HR) professionals, this narrative is familiar. Stress and negative emotional implications as a result of carrying out these difficult tasks has been documented, yet we know these tasks cannot be ignored—someone has to deliver the news. The question is not how do we prevent HR professionals from encountering these scenarios, but how can we better cope with these emotional experiences? Dr. Rick Cotton and his co-authors have some of the answers.
This Is How We Do It: How Perceived Prosocial Impact Offsets Negative Personal Outcomes Associated with Carrying out Necessary Evils, an exploratory research paper by Dr. Rick Cotton and his co-authors, introduces a theoretical model which suggests that the perception of having helped someone in a harrowing situation can provide a buffer from the negative effects of carrying out necessary evils. The research was disseminated to the practitioner audience in August 2016 when Harvard Business Review highlighted the study in an online article entitled: “Coping with the effects of emotionally difficult work.”
When exploring this emotionally difficult work, the authors defined two key terms: necessary evils and prosocial impact. Necessary evils are events that require a person to harm others in the service of the greater good. Conversely, prosocial impact is the experience of having helped someone.
In order to identify themes and stressors associated with carrying out downsizing events (one example of a necessary evil task), Cotton and his co-authors interviewed a targeted sample of seasoned human resources (HR) professionals that had been involved in repeated downsizing initiatives, with several in the sample having personally laid off hundreds of employees.
In-depth interviews with each HR professional discussed their individual downsizing experiences and the acute and chronic effect of these experiences, along with sharing any lessons learned, best practices and advice for new HR professionals. Seven particular stressors were linked with carrying out tasks categorized as necessary evils.
The authors found that the prosocial behavior (such as protecting the privacy of those laid off in a downsizing event) displayed by HR professionals carrying out necessary evil work acted as a buffer from the negative effects of this work—an important finding for the future health and safety of professionals worldwide.
A notable difference in Cotton et al.’s study is that their interviewees had experienced a significant number of downsizing events, which may in part account for their ability to cope through prosocial efforts. Previous research suggested that HR professionals conducting downsizing events coped by withdrawing cognitively, emotionally and physically; however, previous studies focused on professionals who had little experience of conducting downsizing events .
Cotton states: “It was great that we were able extrapolate from the HR environment and construct a model that can be applied to a broader set of occupations.” The research has wide-ranging implications for managers, organizations and HR professionals worldwide and can be used as a framework for how individuals can cope with, and prepare themselves for, emotional difficulty in the workplace.
Original academic article:
Clair, J. A., Ladge, J. & Cotton, R. (2016). This is How We Do it: How Perceived Prosocial Impact Offsets Negative Personal Outcomes Associated with Carrying out Necessary Evils. Journal of Management Inquiry. 25(3): 301 – 321.
doi.org/10.1177/1056492615612577
