Being one of the employees left after a round of retrenchments can be unsettling. Tanya Tosen, a tax and remuneration specialist at Tax Consulting SA, says the survivors can experience something similar to post-traumatic stress. "They may experience feelings of powerlessness and, subconsciously, of being betrayed by the organisation to which they offered their allegiance." Employees' feelings of powerlessness can be compounded by having to deal with post-retrenchment changes such as new faces in management, different responsibilities, increased workload and merging with other teams. The stress can leave employees feeling unmotivated. She has this advice: • One place where employees can get a feeling of control is their remuneration. Flexible benefits, for example, allow employees to decide how much to allocate to compulsory benefits and how much to have as take-home pay; and • Without much extra cash to spend, employers may need to be creative in finding ways to reignite their worke...
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