How do I handle this lay off dilemma as middle management?

I am facing a layoff dilemma. As my employer is facing financial difficulty, it laid off the "non-essential" employees, only keeps the "essential" employee and normally the high-performing employees. I am carefully choosing the words non-essential vs essential, high-performing, because I’m not sure of the right words. The problem is the remained employees seeing the employer has big troubles and they don't want to stay with the employer. They would rather be laid off so they can get the layoff packages and have a new start. So now they are keep but they do not seem to be motivated to work hard. But from the employer point of view, it makes no sense of laying off the high-performing employees and keep the low-performing and non-essential employees. Is this situation common? How can I, as the middle level management, handle the situation ? One more background, I would like know how North American company and European Company deal with that as I know and see a lot of Chinese companies deal with that. That is one of reasons I am asking here.

Mar 15, 2025 - 13:18
 0
How do I handle this lay off dilemma as middle management?

I am facing a layoff dilemma. As my employer is facing financial difficulty, it laid off the "non-essential" employees, only keeps the "essential" employee and normally the high-performing employees. I am carefully choosing the words non-essential vs essential, high-performing, because I’m not sure of the right words.

The problem is the remained employees seeing the employer has big troubles and they don't want to stay with the employer. They would rather be laid off so they can get the layoff packages and have a new start. So now they are keep but they do not seem to be motivated to work hard.

But from the employer point of view, it makes no sense of laying off the high-performing employees and keep the low-performing and non-essential employees. Is this situation common? How can I, as the middle level management, handle the situation ?

One more background, I would like know how North American company and European Company deal with that as I know and see a lot of Chinese companies deal with that. That is one of reasons I am asking here.