The silent and shameful suffering of bosses: layoffs in SME

Of all the decisions that managers of SME have to make, laying off someone is the most difficult as well as the hardest to live with. Layoffs are often seen as a personal failure with mental and psychological consequences that can be disastrous for both the person laid off and the employer responsible. Curiously, the suffering experienced by the employer is never mentioned in the SME context. The works in human resources management that deals with layoffs tend to focus on the employees laid off and on employees who escape layoff. There are also studies of the ‘blues’ felt by human resources managers (HRM) when they have to implement a downsizing policy. But few studies on SME (not to say none at all) take any interest in the psychological impact this decision has from the point of view of the employer, the SME owner.