Prepare for layoff
The walls of my office are becoming barer as I take my personal art and mementos back home.
With the recent mass layoffs of federal workers and more federal jobs hanging by a thread, I asked my talented friend and former White House coworker, Anjali Tripathi, how she has prepared for imminent layoffs. Anjali has survived several rounds of layoffs at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. She shared many tips that I've combined with my own recommendations here.
If you are facing a potentially imminent layoff, here are several steps you can take to prepare:
1. Obtain copies (printed or digital) of all your personnel files. If you're a federal employee, you can download your entire electronic Official Personnel Folder (eOPF) by going to the Print page and waiting an absurdly long time for your request to process. While you wait, you’ll be able to download individual files more quickly. Make sure you at least capture your first and last SF-50 for your current role and your hiring paperwork. Make sure all of your personal contact information in the system is current so that you receive future personnel notifications and your W-2. In eOPF, you can specify what email address will receive notice of updates to your personnel records.
2. Save copies of your position description and performance reviews. Save copies of any promotion packages you prepared to summarize your work and demonstrate your success in the job.
3. Save your Leave and Earnings Statements. I recommend downloading pay stubs for at least the past 15 months. Take a screenshot of your current leave balance in case you need to make sure your leave gets paid out correctly upon separation.
4. Save copies of any public presentations, publications, and speeches you’ve delivered.
5. Save copies of awards. That includes any awards you have received and testimonials from others about your great work. Save copies of any recommendation letters you've written for others.
6. Update your logins. Make sure you change the logins for your personal subscriptions, professional affiliations, news website accounts, and any other websites or services you use for non-government work that use your work email address for login.
7. Download your contacts. If you download them as a .csv file, make sure you open the file and verify that the email addresses exported in a useful manner. I made this mistake when leaving the White House before; all the email addresses I exported showed up as Global Address List gibberish and did not contain an @ symbol. That was not helpful.
8. Take your personal stuff home. There are reports of terminated employees receiving 15 minutes or no chance at all to clean out their offices. If there are any personal items in your office that you’d be sad to lose, take them home now. For me, that includes a Camp David blanket I use on cold office days, and framed photos of my former OSTP coworkers wearing alien headbands for an office party. So far, I’ve left my law school diploma on the wall because it reminds me more of how expensive law school was than of any particularly fond memories.
9. Save any personal files and photos. Delete them off your government devices. Delete personal appointments off your calendar. Check and clean out your Downloads folder.
10. Pre-write your exit email and pre-populate the recipients list. Your exit email notifies colleagues that you’ve been terminated. Provide your personal contact information if you’d like to stay in touch with them. Importantly, pre-populate your exit email with the email addresses for recipients. It may take a long time to do. I hit a recipient limit of 500 contacts and had to set up multiple drafts of the same message so that I’d be able to notify, say, my Dept. of Justice colleagues if I’d no longer be around to answer questions about that case we’re litigating.
11. Pre-write your “Out of Office” auto-reply. This automated email response will notify people that you’re no longer working for the agency, at least for as long as your email account remains active. If desired, provide your personal contact information.
12. Return government property to the office. This may sound obvious, but once I started hunting around for stuff at home, I found several items I’d forgotten I had, like that travel mouse I never used and the external PIV/CAC card reader for my old work laptop. Bring items you’re not using for telework back to the office so you don’t have to do a frantic scavenger hunt later. If your agency maintains a list of all IT or other government equipment in your custody, verify the contents of that list now. Make sure it’s accurate so that you aren’t mistakenly charged for an old work phone you turned in years ago.
13. Get the personal contact information for your bargaining unit leadership. If you belong to a bargaining unit, have the contact information for both your regional steward and your union leadership on hand.
14. Know and preserve your legal rights. Research ahead of time the process and deadlines to file claims with the Merit Systems Protection Board, Federal Labor Relations Authority, Office of Special Counsel, your agency, and any other forums that may be relevant to your specific situation.
Facing a potential layoff is hard. My hope is that these tips will help people prepare for the challenges. If you have other tips to share, let me know.
Disclaimer: As always, make sure you comply with all applicable federal records laws and information-technology requirements. Don’t remove classified information. Don’t stick your personal thumb drive in your agency computer if that’s prohibited at your agency. This post is not legal advice and I don't recommend you take any action that violates federal law.