Years Experience: 20 years or more (Canada)

Downsizing can be a devastating experience for most people. Typically employee performance reports, previously good, deteriorate to marginal or unacceptable; the office culture begins to accept bullying and shouting; and you are kicked off projects where you previously performed well.

It is important to be well-grounded and to understand that the new mood is not personal: it's a corporate technique to make people quit. The management aim is to get the numbers down. So you have to ask yourself if the job is really worth the candle. If you take the severance package, can you get re-employed fairly quickly? If not, soldier on. This too shall pass.

If they let you go anyway, seek legal advice before signing anything.