Design Your Own Downsizing Plan
You have seen the adverse impact profiles of Options 1–7 and the zero-impact benchmark of Option 8 (Random Selection). Now it is your turn. Define a custom criterion below and watch the adverse impact update in real time.
① Define Your Criteria
Sorting Criterion (who gets cut first)
Optional Filters (narrow the pool)
② Your Plan's Adverse Impact
| Group | Workforce N | Laid Off N | Workforce % | Downsized % | Impact (pp) | Status |
|---|
Your Plan — Racialized Identity
Your Plan — Gender
Your Plan vs. All 8 Options
Your plan appears as the solid pink bar (★). Benchmark options are shown at reduced opacity.
Comparison — Racialized Identity
Comparison — Gender
Adverse Impact Calculator
Your plan's demographic cuts auto-populate below. You can also manually edit any cell. The tool computes adverse impact and checks the EEOC 4/5 Rule in real time.
The 4/5 Rule flags a plan when any group's retention rate falls below 80% of the highest-retained group's rate — the legal floor, not a verdict on the plan. A plan that clears it can still concentrate harm on one group; a plan that violates it fails a bright-line legal test regardless of intent. Check both. For the distinction between statistical and practical significance, see the optional module in the main simulator.
For each group, the workforce total shows how many employees are currently at AutoNow. Enter the number to lay off from that group.
By Racialized Identity
By Gender
Layoffs Are Not Just Financial Transactions
Deciding who stays and who goes reshapes families' economic security, employees' sense of dignity, and the long-term trust between people and institutions. Leaders have a responsibility to center fairness and care — not only cost savings — when designing workforce reductions.
What the research tells us: A large body of evidence shows that layoffs can increase stress, harm health, and raise mortality risks. Job displacement following mass layoffs has been linked to a 50–100% spike in mortality in the year after job loss and a 10–15% elevation in death hazards that can persist for two decades — implying a loss of roughly 1–1.5 years of life expectancy for a worker displaced in mid-career (Sullivan & von Wachter, 2009; Zellers et al., 2025). These effects persist even in countries with universal healthcare and generous unemployment insurance.
Layoffs also reduce survivors' commitment, identification, and performance — often called "survivor syndrome" — as employees who remain experience lower trust and weaker organizational identification (Van Dierendonck & Jacobs, 2012; Cameron et al., 1993).
If You Must Do This, Here Is How to Do It Better
📘 Books & Foundational Frameworks
- Responsible Restructuring: Creative and Profitable Alternatives to Layoffs
Evidence-based alternatives to layoffs; demonstrates how firms can restructure without defaulting to headcount reduction. - Causes and Effects of Employee Downsizing: A Review and Synthesis
Comprehensive academic synthesis of causes, processes, and consequences of organizational downsizing. - Downsizing and Survivor Responses: Trust, Justice, and Organizational Commitment
Framework on how trust, procedural justice, and communication shape survivor outcomes after layoffs.
📋 Practitioner Guides & Checklists
- "Layoffs That Don't Break Your Company"
A better workforce-transition philosophy grounded in research on how layoff design affects organizational recovery. - "A Leader's Guide for Ethical Layoffs"
Equity-centered planning framework covering communication, timing, severance, and support. - "11 Ways to Conduct More Empathetic, Respectful Layoffs"
Actionable checklist for preserving dignity throughout the separation process.
⚖️ Equity & Inclusion Perspectives
- DEI-Focused Layoff Guidance
How to protect diversity gains and avoid disproportionate harm to underrepresented employees during reductions. - "How You Downsize Is Who You Downsize"
The foundational study: position-based layoffs produce the largest diversity losses; seniority-based rules produce the smallest.
🔬 Health & Mortality Evidence
- "Job Displacement and Mortality: An Analysis Using Administrative Data"
15% increase in annual mortality over 20-year follow-up; ~1 additional death per 111 employees laid off. - "The Effect of Job Loss on Health: Evidence from Biomarkers"
Targeted layoffs (not closures) produce elevated diabetes and cardiac risk markers — the act of being selected carries a distinct physiological cost. - "Causally-Informative Analyses of the Effect of Job Displacement on All-Cause and Specific-Cause Mortality"
Finnish registry data, N=590,823: mortality effects persist 30 years. Cancer and heart disease emerge at 20–30 years — a slow-burning biological cascade. - "Fairness Perceptions, Trust, and Commitment After Downsizing"
Procedural fairness during layoffs is the strongest predictor of surviving employees' organizational commitment.