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Survey: What happened after the RIF?

If you have lived through a reduction in force, we would like to invite you to participate in this short survey to share your experience. It should take no more than five minutes to complete. Your answers are confidential. Nothing you write will be attributed to you or your employer.

1. At the time of the reduction, what was your role?

Individual contributor on an affected team

Led a team that was directly affected

Senior leader over multiple affected teams

Human Resources

Transformation Office

2. Roughly how many employees did the company have at the time?

Under 500

1,000–5,000

5.000 or more

3. What was the primary reason for the reduction?

Survival — the business was losing money and the cut was existential

Performance — the business was viable but missing targets

Strategic shift — exiting a business, product line, market

Improving agility and speed

Post-merger or acquisition — eliminating overlapping roles

Automation or AI

Offshoring, outsourcing, or relocating work

Other

4. Roughly what share of headcount was cut in your team?

Less than 10%

10–25%

25-50%

50% or more

5. Which of these actually happened, before or during the reduction?

6. One year after the cut, what had changed?

7. What happened to the workload?

The workload stayed the same or grew

The workload was reduced, but by less than the headcount

The workload was reduced roughly in proportion to the headcount

8. What got better?

9. Did any of these happen within 12 months of the reduction?

We rehired for roles that had been eliminated

We backfilled with contractors or vendors

We lost people we didn't want to lose

There was another round of cuts

None of these

10. Overall, did the reduction achieve what leadership set out to achieve?

11. One year after the cuts, were the savings still there?

Fully sustained

Partially eroded

Fully eroded — the cost came back

12. How long did it take to get back to the previous level of performance?

Less than 6 months

6–12 months

More than 12 months

Never got back

13. In hindsight, what do you think would have made the biggest difference?

As a thank you for your participation in this survey, you will receive a summary of the aggregate results once all data is collected and analyzed. Please provide your contact information (optional) so we can email you the report.

	Much worse	About the same	Much better
Productivity
Employee Engagement
Client satisfaction