Laid off employees' resilience, occupational engagement, and recovery

How do laid off employees cope emotionally when they lose their jobs? Does it matter how well the company treated them? Do individual characteristics like resilience and occupational engagement affect how quickly laid off employees bounce back and become reemployed in fulltime jobs with decent wages? Three research questions were examined in this study: Do better employer treatment, higher employee resilience, and higher occupational engagement lead to a) lower negative affective symptoms during the time of unemployment; b) a shorter period of unemployment; and c) a higher salary ratio when comparing the new salary to the previous salary? To address these three questions, 197 laid off employees who had since been rehired into fulltime jobs completed several online questionnaires and scales assessing 1) their subjective assessment of their treatment by their former company in connection with their layoff, 2) the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale, 3) the Occupational Engagement Scale-Worker (OES-W), 4) their perception of their affective symptoms during the time they were unemployed, and 5) a demographic questionnaire which included the number of months it took them to get reemployed, and the salary ratio of their new fulltime job compared to their prior fulltime job from which they were laid off. Multiple regression analyses showed that employees who received better employer treatment, who had higher resilience, and higher occupational engagement had significantly lower negative affective symptoms during the time of their unemployment. However, better employer treatment, higher employee resilience, and higher employee occupational engagement did not significantly predict either the salary ratio or the time required to secure a new job. In addition, employee resilience was significantly related to affective symptoms; employer treatment was significantly related to salary ratio; the Job Curiosity subscale of the OES-W was significantly related to the length of unemployment, and women found subsequent employment more quickly than did men.