Euphemisms for the term “layoff” don't soften the blow

[Note, this post originally appeared in 2009 but is ever so relevant today as we reshare in 2025]

Layoffs, downsizings, "resource actions," as IBM likes to call them, are painful for all of us. And both from an employer perspective and employee perspective.

There are those corporations who have no choice in an recessionary times. It's a "live-to-fight-another-day" decision to do cut backs. It's very similar to the classic ugly ethics dilemma of, "If the lifeboat can make it to shore ONLY if it contains 15 people, but there are 18 in it at the start.... What do you do?"

For the terminated executive or employee, it may make them feel stigmatized, inferior, inadequate. Even if these feelings don't creep up, it absolutely changes their lifestyle, and often their life. If an executive has a family, a mortgage, car payments, tuition bills, it can become a a living tragedy and take years to recover from.

The part that many of us have trouble with is when a company depersonalizes the pain for all involved, or dehumanizes the damage that is done when some action is necessary. It seems at times that it's a sort of corporate "pig Latin," used as parents use pig Latin to keep the true meaning of something from their children.

We were asked recently by Boston public radio station WBUR to talk a bit about our exposure to traditional terms, reasons for new terms, and some guesses at potential future terms for the latest corporate penchant for staffing-related SlimFast dieting. Below is a quick redux. For the radiospot, click here.

Traditional terms:

• layoff
• cutback
• belt tightening

In the category of "positive spin":

• rightsizing
• rationalizing
• early retirement
• furloughing
• staff rebalancing
• top grading.... (popularized by Brad Smart, and most well known inside of GE, where they were known to get rid of the bottom 10% of performers annually ...)

In the category of "make it sound better than working"...

• forced vacation 

In the dehumanizing "make it sound as if it's a "no fault" action:

• workforce reduction
• RIF... (reduction in force)
• downsizing

The UK is brilliant in coming up with creative euphemisms, whether perhaps because culturally the British often have a harder time with "directness," or they just have a wonderful way with words....

• Redundancy
• Gardening leave 

Agricultural terms...

• pruning
• thinning out
• "gardening leave" [again]

New suggestions in the depersonalization lexicon for the 21^st century...

• For those in the financial services industry
  • "Pre-bailout payroll adjustment..."
• For the clothing/tailoring/fashion industry
  • "Employment alteration... "
• For our weight conscious culture
  • "Personnel purge"
• For our plastic surgery culture
  • Nip and tuck ["We did a..."]
• For pharma/biotech:
  • "Draining the gene pool" [as in "my company was forced to drain...."]
• For the green renewable energy movement
  • Crop management ["...we did some..."]
• And, for all those of us who are part of the aging baby boomer generation, and are getting "rationalized" due to an active corporate strategy of replacing older more expensive talent with younger less pricey models, corporate America might use the term
  • "Boomer bounce," as in "I was part of a boomer bounce". Could be misconstrued for a new dance craze, or even the first signs of an economic recovery. Or, "trophy-employeed," as a twist on the trend in America of those who find in their mid-life-crises that swapping out of a first wife or husband for a younger "trophy" wife or husband appears to be a good idea.

Finally, as there are rumors of yet another round of potential cut backs to come in the coming months, a 2^nd shoe to fall so to speak, businesses and corporations of all sizes may no doubt bring new meaning to the term "spring cleaning."