By 9 a.m., you’ve already handled seven anxious emails from team members concerned about yesterday’s layoff announcement. A dark cloud of worry hangs over the workplace, leaving everyone feeling overwhelmed.
You find yourself in a challenging but common situation. While you aim to keep your team calm and focused, the updates from leadership are sparse and inconsistent. The culture you’ve worked so diligently to create is now mired by uncertainty. In a recent Fast Company article, we provide some helpful tips to reduce anxiety and ensure your team stays productive.
Layoffs are just one of many scenarios where uncertainty reigns. Rapid change has become a constant in companies, with research showing that organizational change accelerated by 183% from 2020 to 2024, and by 33% in 2024 alone. Simply put, change isn’t only increasing — it’s increasing faster every year.
This constant upheaval has made work life feel unstable and risky, as employees worry about their livelihoods amid ongoing government cutbacks and corporate restructurings. Unsurprisingly, employee engagement hit an 11-year low in 2024. Unable to predict what lies ahead, many employees disengage entirely.
To support their teams, leaders must tackle uncertainty by reducing threats and, ideally, fostering a sense of safety and stability, even in this increasingly unpredictable environment.
Create clarity
Certainty isn’t a luxury — it’s a fundamental psychological need. Humans thrive on predictability, as it provides a sense of safety. Historically, certainty helped ensure survival, protecting us from dangers like predators or unfamiliar foods.
In modern times, the need for certainty manifests less in survival scenarios and more in our ability to anticipate events in professional, social, and personal contexts. This is reflected in the NeuroLeadership Institute’s SCARF® Model, where “C” stands for certainty. Predictable outcomes generate a sense of reward, motivating us to act. Conversely, uncertainty triggers feelings of threat, causing us to freeze or retreat. At work, this can result in impaired judgment and decreased productivity.
When a team faces significant uncertainty, leaders must focus on managing their sense of threat. There are various approaches to achieve this. Ideally, a leader could quickly provide clarity by confirming who’s affected by layoffs and who’s not. This direct approach would not only tackle the uncertainty head-on but also help reduce the spread of office rumors, which tend to worsen the situation.
Even sharing bad news with those being laid off can offer some relief, as research indicates that uncertainty often feels more distressing than the bad news itself. For example, one study found that people dreaded the chance of a mild electric shock more than knowing for certain they’d receive one. That’s how unpleasant uncertainty can be.
Yet, providing certainty isn’t always possible. Leaders may not have all the answers exactly when employees need them. At times, they might only have partial information — or no information at all. Neuroscience suggests the best approach in these situations is to communicate both what is known and what remains uncertain, including details about the ongoing process.
For instance, in the opening scenario, you could explain that while other departments have received layoff decisions, you’re still waiting for confirmation from your supervisor. You could also share that you’re expecting the list of names in two weeks, offering your team some insight into the timeline.
While not as rewarding as certainty, clarity helps set expectations and fosters a comforting sense of predictability in the brain. The most effective way to provide clarity involves three key steps: establishing clear timelines, eliminating unlikely possibilities, and reaffirming the organization’s core values to reinforce a shared purpose.
In practice, clarity serves as a helpful alternative to certainty. For instance, even if employees remain unsure about their job security, knowing they’ll receive an update in two weeks is far less stressful than facing daily uncertainty. This is the power of clarity in uncertain times — when people understand what lies ahead, they feel more grounded and reassured, easing their minds.
Send SCARF rewards
Clarity about information and processes isn’t the only tool leaders have when facing uncertainty. They can also focus on enhancing people’s sense of reward in the four other SCARF domains: status (feeling valued within the group), autonomy (a sense of control over one’s environment), relatedness (feeling connected and belonging), and fairness (perceiving just and equal treatment).
Boosting rewards in these areas creates what’s known as an “offsetting effect.” If one domain is under threat, leaders can mitigate its impact by strengthening the others. While this approach won’t resolve all challenges — especially in cases of severe threats — it can help ease the discomfort. For instance, you could address a certainty threat during a team meeting about layoffs by focusing on the other SCARF domains:
- Status: You reassure employees that the layoffs are due to cost-cutting measures, not individual performance.
- Autonomy: Before the meeting, you collect anonymous questions from employees and address key concerns during the session.
- Relatedness: You introduce a partnership with HR to provide outgoing employees with resume coaching and job placement assistance.
- Fairness: You explain that severance packages were determined using a standard rubric based on employee tenure.
Though these efforts won’t eliminate the pain of job loss, they aim to reduce the stress caused by uncertainty. While leaders may not be able to prevent layoffs, they can make the waiting process feel more dignified, less isolating, and, hopefully, less threatening.
Strike a balance
In fast-changing work environments, like public-sector downsizing, uncertainty becomes the norm, permeating every aspect of daily life. Coping with it demands constant vigilance, which can be exhausting. When certainty isn’t an option, leaders must step in by providing clarity whenever they can and strengthening other SCARF signals to counteract negative emotions.
Without these efforts, employees often struggle to perform effectively, expending considerable mental energy on managing feelings of threat. This leaves them drained, slow to tackle challenges, and less productive, ultimately hindering organizational performance.
However, when leaders send rewarding signals, even in difficult circumstances, employees are better equipped to handle uncertainty with a sense of calmness and focus. For a species highly attuned to social threats, that sense of stability is invaluable. A version of this article was published in Fast Company. To read the full article, click here.
