Summary:

Kim Allain is a senior HR executive and culture leader known for human-centered, research-informed practice. She leads organizational transformation, leadership development, and change initiatives rooted in the belief that workplaces should elevate people—not deplete them.

What do you do when you’re “promoted” into a layoff? Kim tells the story of being handed a surprise reduction-in-force and how she refused the default playbook—opting for a research-backed, human-first path that protected trust and strengthened the business. We unpack what actually happens to culture after layoffs, why the “psychological contract” matters, and practical ways leaders can make hard changes without breaking their people.

Chapters:

00:00:00 – The “battlefield promotion” into a layoff

00:04:00 – Why default RIFs backfire: trust, culture, and long-tail risk

00:07:00 – Psychological contract 101: what leaders break (often unknowingly)

00:10:00 – Research that changed the plan: alternatives to compulsory cuts

00:18:00 – Sequencing the comms: clarity, criteria, and support

00:22:00 – What happened next: outcomes and org response

00:30:00 – Building resilient culture after hard changes

00:34:00 – Playbook recap: decisions, messaging, and metrics to watch

Host Dr. Jim: linkedin.com/in/drjimk

Guest Kimberly Allain: linkedin.com/in/kimberlygallain

Executive Producer Shannon Cornelison: linkedin.com/in/shannon-cornelison-9aa8b8248

Creative Advisor Dr. Jim Kanichirayil: linkedin.com/in/drjimk

Music Credit: "Lost in Dreams" by Kulakovka

And he's done some tremendous research on the impact of layoffs. And so I got deep into that research and I built a case that it would be better for us if we really did need to downsize to do a voluntary separation. Program. And of course there is the morale that you deal with for the next 12 to 24 months after a layoff for the people that are there.

That trust for them is never fully realized again. And so we always wonder why our cultural initiatives aren't working. And it's not because people, don't want to be. All in on a cultural renewal implementation. It's because they're still carrying baggage from maybe, two or three employers ago.

They have a different psychological contract with what work is

Dr. Jim: congratulations on your promotion. You've now just stepped into your first leadership role, and the first order of business that we have for you is that you need to fire 30 people by the end of the day today. If you were on the receiving end of that sort of battlefield promotion, what would your reaction be?

And just by virtue of you being the next person up, you've been drafted into executing the initiative. And that's the story that we're gonna share today. Not only the story itself, but how you navigate those circumstances and do it in a way that doesn't crush you and make you crumble.

Today we have Kim Elaine, who is a senior HR executive and culture strategist who spent her career building workplaces where people and organizations thrive together.

She began in learning and development and quickly moved into HR leadership where defining early experience shaped her commitment to human-centered research informed practice. She's known for clarity, empathy, and strategic thinking. Kim focuses on aligning operational realities with the dignity, wellbeing, and long-term growth of people.

Kimberly, welcome to the show.

Kim Allain : Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Dr. Jim: Yeah, I'm looking forward to this conversation. I think there's gonna be a lot of things that our audience is gonna learn from it. And I think the best way to jump in is both feet first.

So why don't you get the ball rolling by telling us that moment in your career where you thought, oh geez, I'm gonna get myself fired.

Kim Allain : Oh my goodness. I can definitely tell you when that was. And I don't know if I was going to get myself fired, but I was definitely mandated to go and fire 30 other people. I worked for an organization, it was a computer tech firm in the early two thousands and I had been with that organization probably for about six months, and at the time I was the manager of learning and development and I worked alongside the regional human resources officer.

And so on the day when they communicated to her, it's, this is the day we're doing it, and you're one of the people that's being laid off. And because she was being laid off, she said. Forget this, I'm not laying off anybody, and I became the senior human resources person in the region for the all of the Western region, and so I was tasked with finding those 30 people in the building and laying them off.

Kim Allain : first of all, I was scared because my training had been in learning and development, and we look at the human potential of people. We are not looking to enforce compliance. I do now in my role. As a Chief Human Resources Officer, so first of all, I thought I was gonna say something that was going to get the company in major litigation.

That was number one. Number two, the reason that I got into HR is because I wanted to make the work lives of people better. I wanted to create an environment so that employees could thrive and that we could fulfill our sense of meaning and purpose.

And it's also not putting people in a position to learn on the fly.

Kim Allain : you

know, I'm getting ahead of myself a little bit, but what I found out is there's lots of research over many years and I remember when I was faced with this in my current organization back during COVID. And during that time, we had to consider whether or not we would lay off. And after doing the research I found out that layoffs were going to have the exact opposite effect of what we anticipated.

Dr. Jim: when we think about the experience that you were dropped into. You mentioned that you were scared. It sounds like the company didn't really look for any other alternatives other than just let's see what we can do in terms of eliminating personnel. Was that what actually happened, or did you get line of sight into what their thought process was? But when it came to just laying off people, were there other avenues that they looked at?

Kim Allain : So it was the worst possible situation imaginable because I did not. Even know what their strategy or plan was. I did not know what their financial targets were. I didn't know anything, so I was not brought into the loop until literally the day that I was told You are now our senior regional human resources manager, and the person who was in that role who we were going to rely on also got laid off and now she, and.

Dr. Jim: So I'm thinking through this scenario I'm imagining myself in your position. I tend to be snarky. So if somebody told me this,

my response in the moment would probably be along the lines of failure to plan on your part doesn't constitute an emergency on my part,

so you're gonna need to have a better plan of action.

Just throwing me into it and having me chase these people down, that's not realistic and it's probably why I'm not in hr, but. The lack of planning and and strategy around it is it's really jarring. and we'll get to how we can triage that in a little bit. But here you are thrown into this situation and you have to get rid of all these people. How do you react in that moment and how did you motivate yourself into action? Because this is the worst possible scenario that you could be in short of some sort of natural disaster.

And I didn't feel like I was in a position to be able to be to stand on principle. I, if you ask me today, I would tell you the exact same thing that you just said, but back then I didn't feel like I should have to stand on principle in order to be able to survive and keep my family.

Dr. Jim: Oh that's interesting. So they're catching you in this moment where? Behind the scenes, like in your own circumstances, you're operating in survival. So you just have to navigate life as it comes instead of being able to zoom out. Okay. Now you have to do the thing. So what did that look like?

And here's me, who's been there six months. So the narrative started to be, she wiggled her way into that role, and they got rid of the person that we knew and loved for seven to 10 years. Even if we didn't like her, we knew her. And so it became that. And so I was the grim reaper. And the building. So if she finds you, just know that you're going to be laid off.

And she was absolutely right. I was, again, I was young and I was immature at the time. And frankly, I was a little bit of a people pleaser. It's, it is something that I still like, struggle with the today, not as much, but I was a little bit of a people pleaser back then, and so to actually put me in that role, we're talking about not just the principles of it, we're also talking about the emotional architecture.

That undergirded who I was, right? And so there were more than principles that needed to be reconciled after this. There was also what is the makeup of who you are, because the last thing I wanna do is be put in a place that I have to harm people or, my, my goal was to make people like me. So to give me this job on the first day of my role as a senior human resources officer was the absolute worst thing that could have been done from my perspective.

But it served me throughout the years.

down and corner them

You have this counter narrative that's happening about you behind the scenes that's being developed, and then you have to fight against your own DNA

to deliver these messages when you have all of that stuff collapsing thing top of you. How do you not just freeze up? What, what kept you moving forward to get this done? Because I could imagine a scenario where somebody at your stage in your career at the time would've just crumbled.

Kim Allain : So Jim, I don't think that I did not crumble. So there was the people pleasing part of me that knew that I had to get this task done for the, for headquarters, right? So I wanted to, at least, be in alignment with their faith in me that I should be the senior human resources manager in the region.

So it's not like I did not crumble. And I heard, I asked someone after that, I said, I don't know that I'm cut out for this work because I can't do this. And the gentleman told me, he says, the day that you stop crying is the day that you should get out is the day that you no longer care about people.

So that is what made me keep going in this field.

Dr. Jim: that's a really good comment. Because if you reach the time where you're not upset and. Reacting emotionally or reacting negatively to these sort of things happen. It probably means that you're too jaded and you've burnt out all of your empathy to actually be

'cause that's not exactly, starting off on a positive note.

Kim Allain : No, it wasn't. And I think that my stay being, staying there wasn't like, I wasn't entertaining opportunities outside of there because it, it really had violated the principles that I personally hold, but also of other organizations that I work for. This was my first going to that company.

And yes, I stayed there five years and was happy when it, when I got a position that was in alignment with who. I was more in alignment with who I was, but I transitioned more into organizational development and that is where I always felt that I could make the most difference. So I transitioned to that and then when I came to my current organization, I started as the a VP for talent development.

But. They then said, no, we think you should be the crow. And that was five years ago during COVID. And we decided and I've been in this role and I understand now how important influence is. And it's not important. It's not necessary to just do task, but it's really important to be strategic and to do things that are in alignment.

Dr. Jim: There, there's something in what you just mentioned that caught my interest and that was, it was this sort of experience among other things that led to you transitioning into organizational development. Connect those dots for me. What were the things that happened that indicated to you that you could have more impact in an OD role versus some other path in hr?

Kim Allain : Oh, on the organizational development side, we're looking at the promise of people, the potential of people, and the potential of collective organizations when they have a great culture. So we're looking at making the things better. On the HR side, I felt like I was enforcing compliance and I was, carrying out things that were not gonna be the happiest part of a person's career.

Programmatic cultural initiatives

Dr. Jim: So as I think through your answer the other thing that kind of bubbles up in my head is that if you are operating in an OD you can have influence, as you mentioned on the culture of it and how the culture is shaped, is gonna impact how HR on the compliance side executes.

Kim Allain : it helped me to be more nuanced in my responses to organizational issues and crisis, whereas I noticed. On the HR side, sometimes we can be black and white. It either is in compliance or is not in compliance, or we either do it this way or we don't. And OD offers the pathway or the vehicle.

Let's follow the rules, let's do the right thing. And I like the rules. I think that they're great guidelines, but I also think we need to understand how humans can behave and thrive within our rules.

Dr. Jim: any examples of how this actually showed up in how you show up as a people leader within some of the later organizations that you were a part of?

Kim Allain : Yeah, absolutely. And it's, it was in the organization that I'm currently in, so around COVID we were faced with potentially laying. Off at our, at our campus. And there were other campuses in our system who did decide to lay off. But I went and there's a researcher, Charlie Trevor, out of the University of Wisconsin Madison.

There is the lack of trust or the trust that it erodes the lack of innovation. There's the increase in voluntary separations afterwards. And then we also damaged the workforce, the talent pool that we have left out to dry, so to speak, because they never really recover. They are like 65% more likely to just quit an organization.

That trust for them is never fully realized again. And so we always wonder why our cultural initiatives aren't working. And it's not because people, don't want to be. All in on a cultural renewal implementation. It's because they're still carrying baggage from maybe, two or three employers ago.

Dr. Jim: Y your answer is particularly interesting to me because when I look at like my career arc. For anybody that's listening that's in the Gen X or later crowd, you'll know exactly where I'm going from the going with this. You'll see older generations often say the people of today don't wanna work anymore. And the part that gets missed is that the newest generations in the workforce and even some older generations in the workforce have grown up in an environment where they've seen their parents or their loved ones or their peers. Give their all to a particular company. And as soon as the winds shift economically, you get, kicked out on your butt. and especially when you're talking about, gen Z and millennials, they look at their parents during the housing crash. That just got completely wiped out. And then just when you start recovering from [00:22:00] that, you have the pandemic. And companies again, wipe. People off the board with no consideration to anything other than maximizing shareholder value and their bottom line.

So it's, it's interesting how. The other side of the equation of why people aren't committed to all of these initiatives that corporations like throwing out why that commitment isn't there. Your point about the the baggage that everybody carries, especially if you've been in the world of work long enough you might wanna start looking at that as a reason. It's interesting that you looked at all of the research and. You as an organization or you and your team as an organization is looking at, okay, what's the path forward in the midst of the pandemic? And you bring the research forward. How did you move forward from the research into execution?

And what was the impact after you had you had executed this?

We didn't re require it to be people who were eligible retirement. It could be anybody. And, the pandemic was really impactful, obviously to people. So some folks just wanted to check out of the work workplace for a while, and they were given enough separation in order to do that and to look for another job.

So we had it all over the board. The impact was, IM, it was. We didn't have the morale issues that some of the other campuses had, and we had appreciation. We are heavily unionized, so we had appreciation and a better collaborative working relationship with our union. However, the impact of those individuals outside of that, that left the workforce, the work they were doing was substantial.

So we we avoided some of that. We avoided that a lot.

Dr. Jim: So anytime you have shifts in what happens in your workforce, it it creates ripple effects through, the people that are left behind in the organization. You mentioned that the. Morale impact wasn't as severe if you had done it a different way. How did you suss that out and what was it that you heard from people that were still there in terms of their reactions to the shift in in staffing.

And so as part of that whole strategy, we had to make sure that when folks were taking on extra duties as a result of someone taking the separation package that we had funds set aside as part of this strategy to increase people's salaries. Now. There does become a capacity issue. You, we can increase your salary, 50% and you still can't handle the work of two or three people.

So we also have to do a start, stop, continue exercise, which is why right in my OD wheelhouse, you know what work is essential. What work is something that can be put off for a three year strategic plan and what can we eliminate altogether? So those were points in the strategy that we had to consider.

As if, as it flies.

Kim Allain : So we created what we called it was the, it was an early exit plan for managers. So for all the managers who were losing people, we had a four-part series on how to administer. Or how to think about their organization and that work that we talked about, whether it was essential or whether it was something that could be delayed or taken off altogether.

We had a four-part series that was part of our strategy. Because it was voluntary, we couldn't control who was going to leave, right? So usually organizations use their layoffs to get rid of some folks who maybe were not being held accountable for results.

Dr. Jim: So you went through this exercise during the pandemic and it was informed by, the entire arc of your career.

want you to hit rewind.

Kim Allain : Okay.

Dr. Jim: would've been the impact of this approach that you took during the pandemic? Restructuring was applied in the first instance that we talked about where you just got dropped in and you had to tear the bandaid off and figure stuff out. How would've things gone differently in that first circumstance?

Kim Allain : That, that's a fantastic question and I can tell you, and I'm gonna just tell you from my lived experience, what it was like being in that environment after the layoff and especially having been the one to execute it. Walking in the building after that was like, the oxygen was sucked out of the place.

Which it, that happens in great organizations and it also happens in organizations where people have lost trust and they want a commiserating partner or group of folks collectively. And I believe that's what it was being used for. People in organization, the organization that I'm in now, we build connection, we build community in that organization.

Instead of just building a commiserating partner, nobody was trying to connect with other people because everybody was looking for a job, right? And they don't want to have to unpeel themselves from those bonds that they create inside of an organization. And then you probably know this, they're survivor's guilt.

And I have to say this, and this is the one thing that I think gets lost when we talk about layoffs. It doesn't, it, the research shows that it does not serve the organization. From a budget and economic or financial san standpoint, it does not serve the organization in the long run. They don't recover financially.

It's primarily a shareholder move. It's an optics move. It's not an operational move. And for public institutions it's even worse because they're already running lean and not only. Here's the thing, when people come into public institutions, we don't get bonuses and we don't get, commission or anything like that.

They won't get they just won't get over it. And so it damages the workforce and the collective pool that we all draw from. And and it doesn't work. It's not a it's a trust breaking move. It's not a financial move. Doesn't work.

Dr. Jim: one of the things that it reminds me of is that, if you wanna be a mission-driven organization, people are only gonna drive to the mission as long as their morale allows them to.

So if you're actually operating in a way that crushes morale every single day,

nobody's gonna do no, nobody's going to pay attention to the mission.

Kim Allain : So the first thing is you can't just have a seat at the table. You have to have a voice at the table. Also, I'm a strong advocate for the chief human Resources officer reporting directly to the executive office. There was a time when I reported to the financial office and can you imagine what my financial, a VP would've said to me if I presented a program like this, right? It, so reporting to the finance office suppresses the voice. So if I were ever to be offered a job, I would wanna know where that job reported to, and if it reported to the CFO. I would [00:32:00] recognize that as not having the influence that I would need to in order to have a, the kind of career that I wanted, but more importantly to advance the kind of framework that I believe creates a human-centric organization and elevates the employee experience, listen, nobody grew up thinking, I wanna work in a cubicle, Everybody had grandiose ideas when they were kids about what they would be when they grew up. Now we can't always get them there, but we can at least give them an experience where they have a sense of meaning and purpose in their roles and where they're operating at their highest levels and it's appreciated.

Dr. Jim: So I'd like you to expand on one thing that you mentioned. So for people at our stage in the career we knew exactly what you meant when you said, if you report into the finance office or the CFO, it's gonna have a different feel in terms of how the operation runs. Tell us a little bit more about what that actually means in real terms.

Kim Allain : I'll just tell you that probably about two or three years ago, an opportunity was presented to me and it was actually making substantially more than I'm making now, but it was going to report to the CFO and I requested to have a one-on-one with that individual so that I could get an understanding of his conceptual framework and.

His thing was you will never report to, the CEO of this organization, you'll report to me. And the last person wanted all of these human-centric initiatives, which he could not make the connection to. So my voice would never have been heard. And if I wanted to be high performing in that manager's eyes, I would've had to comply with a strictly numbers perspective.

Dr. Jim: Great stuff, Kim. If people want to continue the conversation, what's the best way for them to get in touch with you?

Kim Allain : I'm on LinkedIn and you can find me under Kimberly Elaine.

Dr. Jim: I definitely appreciate you hanging out with us and sharing with that with us. The story of how you got thrown into a giant mess and. I'm sure listeners will have learned a lot from this conversation, and the thing that I think about is when we're thinking about what sort of organization do you want to be, and specifically how do you want your people to show up in that organization?

So people in the front lines are always thinking, this is gonna come outta left field. Once you've done that and the decisions have been made, the next step becomes how do you upskill, reskill and realign your existing staff to meet the moment and the needs going forward? So if you take that structured approach going forward, you can minimize a lot of the pain and bad feelings that comes out of. Decisions that you have to be, have to make to serve the bottom line or serve the economic conditions. I think the mistake that a lot of organizations make is that they feel the urgency of making a deci a decision and they draw a straight line from where they are to the worst possible outcome. And the easiest thing to do is just cut payroll and that leads to a lot of bad feelings that you never recover from.