Finding the Exit

An employee of the Detroit Institute of Arts for almost 30 years, Steven Niemi had survived layoffs in two previous recessions, and thought he was probably safe even in the current downturn. So he was unprepared when the museum included him in a huge layoff in late February.

Twenty percent of the staff — 56 full-time and nine part-time employees — lost their jobs, according to museum managers.

Mr. Niemi, an interpretation specialist who helped develop printed guides, videos, and wall plaques, says he feels bewildered by the 21st-century job market. “The last time I applied for a job, it was within the building. It was back in the 1980s, there was no Internet, and not that many people had personal computers,” he says. “So this is a very new process for me.”

But his situation has been eased somewhat, he says, by the outplacement help he received as part of his severance package. He has taken advantage of several hours of counseling, résumé-writing assistance, and job-placement services.

“It’s been an enormous help to have someone holding my hand and guiding me,” Mr. Niemi says. Although significant layoffs have been rippling through nonprofit organizations of all sizes since last fall’s Wall Street meltdown, the Detroit Institute of Arts is one of a very few nonprofit organizations that are offering some form of outplacement support to laid-off workers.

And it’s no wonder why. According to Sondra Jenkins, the Detroit museum’s human-resources director, the institution will spend about $1,500 per laid-off employee. That buys about 12 hours of outplacement services per worker at a discounted price, based on the museum’s longstanding relationship with Thomas & Associates, a business that specializes in working with cultural organizations. But at a time of desperate cost cutting, such programs can be simply too pricey.

Expensive for Small Charities

“Smaller organizations really don’t have the resources,” says Jeffrey S. Vengrow, director of CNE Solutions, the management-consulting division at the Center for Nonprofit Excellence, in Akron, Ohio. Even medium-size charities may not have the kind of well-developed personnel and budgeting systems that anticipate the need for such services, he adds.

Some small groups say they do not think outplacement services would meet their needs. This February the Maryland Historical Society, in Baltimore, laid off six employees, 13 percent of its staff. Anne Garside, the charity’s director of communications, said outplacement services would not be useful for those people, adding that curators and other professionals would find jobs primarily through their personal networks, while secretaries and security guards would be better served by receiving additional severance pay.

But some larger organizations do enlist the help of outplacement consultants when shedding workers.

For example, the Nature Conservancy, in Arlington, Va., and the American Civil Liberties Union, in New York, confirmed that they offered outplacement services after their recent layoffs, though both declined to discuss the details.

Among the policies of other organizations:

• CARE, in Atlanta, has laid off about 15 percent of its staff members, 75 people, who will receive, depending on seniority, between one and four months of outplacement services.
• The J. Paul Getty Trust, in Los Angeles, offered a similar program from Right Management to the 14 percent of its work force, about 90 people, who were let go in April. Entry-level employees received a month of basic résumé and interview support, while senior personnel got up to three months’ worth of counseling or coaching tailored to their needs.
• The public broadcaster WHYY, in Philadelphia, offered its exiting employees a two-day seminar on résumé writing, interview strategies, and building professional networks, provided by a local company, Kelleher Associates. The program cost $4,000, and 12 out of 17 recently laid-off employees attended, according to John Payne, WHYY’s director of human resources.
• National Public Radio, in Washington, which in December cut 64 people (about 7 percent of its staff), offered a severance package including outplacement services, according to Dana Davis Rehm, senior vice president for marketing, communications, and external relations.

In addition to one day of pay for every month of employment, as well as six months of fully paid health-insurance benefits after their jobs ended, laid-off NPR employees have the option to use four months of career-assessment and job-search services at a local outplacement provider or be reimbursed up to $3,500 for attending job-related training sessions and conferences.

But the organization is able to offer such benefits only because it does not need to see any savings from these staff cuts until the 2010 and 2011 budget years, Ms. Rehm says. Having experienced much more drastic cuts in 1983 — when more than a quarter of NPR employees were let go — the organization has learned to plan for both the cost reductions of cyclical layoffs and the expense of severance packages in its long-range budget forecasting.

“There is an expectation on the part of the public and of donors that as nonprofits we treat our people well and respectfully and humanely,” says Ms. Rehm. But that’s much harder, she says, for a small-budget organization, or one under more immediate financial pressure.

Open Communication

Geri Thomas, president of the consultancy that provided outplacement services for the Detroit Institute of Arts, has a slightly darker view, at least when it comes to arts organizations.

In general, she says, museums, galleries, and other cultural groups are not great at developing and supporting their workers. At the topmost tiers, there isn’t enough succession planning, while in the case of entryor midlevel workers, there’s a sense of expendability, Ms. Thomas says.

Some institutions know that no matter how they treat their workers, “there’s a long line of 40 young women down the road” who will gladly take a job when the organization is hiring again, she says.

“This is the fourth recession in the arts that I’ve seen in New York City,” Ms. Thomas says. “We know that these are cyclical events. What are institutions doing to protect themselves, the public, and the work force?

“If we continue to do this, don’t give workers any training, we’ll lose a whole lot of institutional memory,” she adds.

In this context, she believes, outplacement support is a way to maintain a good reputation and relationship with past, present, and future employees.

But smaller organizations have ways to achieve those goals, too, says Sharon E. Friedman, executive director of the Mental Health Association of Montgomery County, in Rockville, Md., which has a staff of about 100.

“To the best of our ability, we let everyone know, right along the way, what changes might be happening,” says Ms. Friedman. “They really appreciate us having the conversation with them, as opposed to reading the newspaper and finding out the local government” will be cutting the charity’s budget, she says.

Although her organization, like many charities that receive a lot of support from state government, is still operating under last year’s fiscal budget, Ms. Friedman is prepared for the possibility of staff cuts in the future. In that case, she says, laid-off workers will be provided with some form of outplacement counseling through the charity’s employee-assistance plan.

Making Choices

On an even more informal basis, Medical Teams International, in Tigard, Ore., a disaster-relief organization with a budget of about $80-million, has simply tried to offer as much one-on-one help to the nine employees (out of 90) it recently let go, says Vickie Kehler, director of human resources.

“We talked about providing outplacement. However, we felt the severance package was more important,” says Ms. Kehler. “Management took a cut in pay representing $55,000, which helped us provide additional weeks of severance pay as well as an extra month of health-insurance coverage” to laid-off workers.

And instead of hiring a consultant to help with job searches, she says, “with all nine individuals, we tried to do whatever we could to help the process, from making personal telephone calls to prospective future employers and having our CEO write reference letters.”

While cost seems to be the major factor in a nonprofit group’s decision on how to handle laid-off employees, the effectiveness of career-transition services should also be considered, say some workers who have used them.

A former policy analyst for a large nonprofit research organization in Washington said she felt that outplacement support was merely putting a gloss on an otherwise stingy severance package and a poorly handled dismissal.

The woman — who requested anonymity to protect her future employment prospects — was offered one month’s salary, two months of payments to help maintain her health insurance, and up to $3,000 in reimbursement for outplacement services. She says she asked if she could receive additional severance pay instead of the outplacement allowance, and was refused.

“No. 1, what I really wanted was the money, and No. 2, I think in my field, international development, we depend a lot more on our networks than on recruiters or those kinds of services” to find work, she says. She says the services she was offered did not impress her. In addition, she says, her state offers many of the same services, including guidance on résumé writing and interviewing techniques, for free.

At CARE, Cesar Duron, a human-resources generalist who helped to notify workers that they were being let go, has learned that he will soon lose his own job. While all the other laid-off staff members were asked to leave in mid-May, Mr. Duron agreed to stay on until the end of July to help with the downsizing. At the same time, he has been working with an outplacement coach to get his résumé in order and to build up his network of professional contacts.

A native of Honduras who managed human resources for CARE’s field office there before being transferred to the Atlanta headquarters about 10 years ago, Mr. Duron says his coach has been particularly helpful in banishing any discouragement he might feel because of his immigrant status, and has encouraged him to promote his international experience and bilingualism as assets that make him stand out.

While outplacement support has been a positive experience for him, Mr. Duron says he sees some minor shortcomings in what he perceives as a “customer-service approach” to the process.

His coach is a good resource for information, skills assessment, and emotional support, but not necessarily an aggressive advocate who will land him a job.

Says Mr. Duron, “I understand that ultimately I have to drive this process.”