Leading Through and After Layoffs: Helping Your Institution Recover, Rebuild, and Move Forward
In this article
The leadership challenge presented by university and college layoffs
How organizational grief affects both individuals and teams
What the people leaving need from their leaders
What the people staying need to move forward
Why rebuilding the organization requires more than reducing its size
Five leadership questions to guide recovery
Higher education is experiencing one of its most challenging periods in decades. Current financial pressures and an environment of uncertainty are forcing many institutions to make difficult decisions about staffing and organizational structure, including layoffs.
For many leaders, announcing layoffs is one of the hardest moments of their careers. In higher education, it also can be a new experience. After decades in which many institutions focused on growth, expansion, and new initiatives, today's financial realities are forcing leaders into unfamiliar territory without a clear roadmap.
Planning for and communicating layoff decisions can feel like the hardest work; however, it is also not an endpoint. Once the difficult decisions are announced, leaders must embrace their role in helping the institution recover. And recovery is not simply a matter of resuming business as usual. It requires rebuilding trust, helping people make sense of what has happened, redefining priorities, and creating confidence in the path ahead.
Recovery requires leaders to do four things well:
Acknowledge what has been lost.
Support both those leaving and those staying.
Rebuild trust and a shared sense of purpose
Redesign the organization for its new reality.
A university does not simply lose people and positions. It loses relationships, institutional knowledge, routines, traditions, and, for many people, a sense of stability. As a leader, you may have had weeks or months to process details others are only learning now. Supporting both those who leave and those who stay is an essential leadership role.
Organizational Change Often Brings Grief
One of the most important lessons for leaders is recognizing that organizational change happens on a calendar. Human transition does not. No matter how prepared people are for what might be coming, when the news becomes personal and affects them or people they care about, it takes on a different meaning and import, and it requires time to process.
Although we often think of grief in personal terms, organizations experience loss as well.
Faculty and staff may lose:
Colleagues they have worked alongside for years.
Trusted mentors and collaborators.
Institutional memory and historical context.
Teams that felt like communities.
Confidence in the institution's future.
Their own sense of psychological safety.
These losses can produce a wide range of emotional responses.
Some people become frustrated or angry. Others withdraw. Some immerse themselves in work as a coping strategy, while others struggle to concentrate or make decisions. People may experience a range of emotions over time, and there is no single "correct" path through change.
Some losses are immediately visible. Others are quieter but equally significant. A department may lose the person everyone turned to for historical context, the administrator who connected people across campus, or the colleague who quietly held a team together. These forms of institutional memory and social capital rarely appear on organizational charts, yet they often take years to rebuild.
A restructuring may occur in a single day, but people often need weeks or months to let go of what was, understand what has changed, and begin investing in a new future.
Appreciation and Kindness: Supporting the People Who Leave
Those leaving deserve dignity, transparency, appreciation, and support as they begin the next chapter of their careers. The way an institution treats departing colleagues shapes its reputation long after the layoffs have ended.
Faculty notice.
Current employees notice.
Future employees notice.
Students notice.
Acts of respect and compassion matter. Honest communication, opportunities for closure, sincere appreciation for contributions, and practical transition support help people leave with dignity.
While leaders cannot remove the disappointment of losing a valued colleague, they can influence whether individuals feel respected throughout the process. Those actions also send a powerful message to everyone who remains.
It is also important to keep in mind that what this looks like may differ from person to person or group to group. Public acknowledgment, in particular, is very tricky, and it is important to both gauge what would be appreciated and get input from the people involved as well as those supporting the overall process.
Of course, providing support does not eliminate the pain of the decisions that were made. However, done thoughtfully, support can help to ensure that, even in one of the most difficult moments of their careers, departing colleagues experience the respect, appreciation, and humanity that reflect the institution's values.
Clarity and Compassion: Supporting the People Who Stay
Those staying are often navigating uncertainty, increased workloads, disrupted relationships, and questions about the institution's future.
Remaining team members may experience what organizational psychologists call “survivor syndrome,” a common pattern of emotional responses following layoffs. They may feel grateful to have a job still while simultaneously grieving the loss of colleagues, worrying about further reductions, questioning leadership decisions, or feeling overwhelmed or resentful due to expanded responsibilities. These reactions are not signs that people are resistant to change. They are often natural responses to uncertainty, loss, and a disruption of the psychological contract between employees and their institution.
A central leadership challenge after layoffs is balancing compassion and progress. Lean too far toward compassion alone, and the organization may struggle to regain momentum. Focusing only on moving forward may make people feel their losses have been minimized or ignored. Effective leaders resist treating this as an either-or choice. They acknowledge what has been lost while helping people to work through their emotions and begin building what comes next.
Recovery also requires leaders to distinguish between urgency and sustainability. Remaining employees often respond by working longer hours and taking on responsibilities that once belonged to colleagues. In the short term, this generosity can help an institution stabilize. Over time, however, it can become a source of burnout and resentment if priorities are not revisited. Leaders should resist celebrating people for "doing more with less" without also asking what work should no longer be expected.
People need clarity on what has changed, what has not, and what the institution is trying to accomplish next. Perhaps most importantly, they need permission to acknowledge that the experience has been difficult.
The Reality: A Smaller Organization Cannot Do the Same Work
One of the most common mistakes after layoffs is assuming that only the headcount has changed. In reality, the organization itself has changed. The assumptions that shaped how work was organized, how decisions were made, and how responsibilities were divided may no longer hold.
An organizational structure is designed (or has evolved) around a particular set of resources, priorities, and ways of working. When staffing levels change significantly, the organization must change as well. Simply asking fewer people to absorb the same work, follow the same processes, and meet the same expectations is rarely sustainable.
This is where organizational effectiveness becomes essential. Recovery is not about preserving yesterday's organization with fewer people. It is about intentionally designing an organization that can succeed under today's realities. It forces organizations to re-examine how work is done and to make tough choices about what can’t be done because there isn’t capacity.
It is time for leaders to reflect on and to gain input from their teams on:
What work is now most important?
What work should stop altogether?
Which decisions need to move faster or closer to the people doing the work?
Where have roles become unclear or overlapping?
What meetings, committees, reports, or approval processes no longer add sufficient value?
What capabilities does the organization need now that it did not need before?
The goal is not simply to distribute more work across fewer people. The goal is to redesign the organization so that its priorities, structure, and ways of working are aligned with its new reality. Recovery should leave an institution not only smaller, but also clearer about its priorities, more intentional in how work gets done, and better positioned to fulfill its mission with the people and resources it has today.
Recovery Happens One Conversation at a Time
We know from years of research that organizational culture is not rebuilt through a single town hall or strategic plan. It is rebuilt through hundreds of conversations. Every interaction either increases confidence or uncertainty. Every meeting either reinforces trust or weakens it.
When the transitions happen, rather than asking, "How quickly can we move past this?" leaders should ask, "How can we help people leave knowing they were valued?"
To the remaining teams, rather than asking, "Why isn't everyone moving on?" leaders are often better served by asking, "What have people lost, and what do they need to begin moving forward?"
We also know that during periods of uncertainty, people pay closer attention to leaders than they normally do. They notice what leaders say, but they also notice what leaders avoid saying. They notice whether leaders are accessible, whether decisions appear consistent, and whether words align with actions. Trust is rebuilt not through a single message but through repeated demonstrations of competence, fairness, and care.
The leaders who help organizations recover are the ones who are consistently present, transparent about what they know and do not know, willing to listen, and committed to helping people make sense of what comes next.
Five Questions Every Leader Should Ask After Layoffs
As your institution begins its next chapter, consider these questions:
What have we lost that deserves to be acknowledged?
What assumptions are people making because they have not heard from us?
What work should we intentionally stop now that our organization has changed?
What can we make clearer this week than it was last week?
What future are we inviting people to help build together?
Gathering input (sensemaking) and sharing out what you have heard or learned (communicating) are core leadership skills, especially in times of transition, and need to be prioritized.
Final Thoughts
No university wants layoffs to become part of its story. Yet for many institutions, they have become an unfortunate reality of today's higher education landscape.
How leaders respond after those decisions are made often has as much impact as the decisions themselves: Recovery requires acknowledging loss while creating hope. It requires supporting people who leave with dignity and helping those who remain rediscover purpose, trust, and confidence. Most importantly, it requires recognizing that rebuilding an institution is about far more than reorganizing an organizational chart. It is about rebuilding a community.
In many ways, the period after a layoff becomes a defining chapter in an institution's history. It can be central to how that institution's culture is experienced for years to come. People will remember whether they felt informed or left guessing, whether leaders were visible or absent, whether the organization learned from the experience or simply endured it.
The institutions that emerge strongest from periods of profound change are rarely those that simply reduce costs most effectively. They are the ones whose leaders help people navigate transition with honesty, compassion, and a clear vision for what comes next. While no leader hopes to navigate these moments, they provide an extraordinary opportunity to demonstrate the values that define an institution when those values matter most.
Continue the Conversation
Periods of organizational change test every aspect of leadership, from communication and decision-making to organizational design and team culture. At Academic Leadership Group, we partner with colleges and universities as they navigate these pivotal moments. Whether you're redesigning an organization, supporting leaders through difficult transitions, or rebuilding trust after significant change, we help institutions create the leadership systems and organizational clarity needed for what's next.
If your institution is navigating significant organizational change, we'd welcome the opportunity to talk.
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Deepen your understanding with these related resources:
After Higher Education Cuts, You Need to Explore If Your Organization Still Works
Strategic Budgeting in Higher Education: Aligning Resources with Mission in an Era of Uncertainty