Betrayed by Work , livre ebook

• Large Potential Market: The US Labor Department projects that by 2024, 51.4% of the US Labor Force will be women. With more women in the labor market, there will presumably be more firing.  In 2017 there were 71,936,000 women in the civilian labor force. Women are employed to a greater extent in management, professional and related occupations than are men - 43.7% of women are employed in those occupations while 36.2% of men are. This is our target market. (https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/womens-databook/2018/home.htm - Table 10)
• Undeserved Market:  Research and conversations with professional women suggest that this is a vibrant, underdeveloped area of publication: diverse mid-career “women of a certain age” do not have a lot of resources devoted to them, while they do have financial resources to devote to themselves! Almost every woman we showed a draft to could relate to the stories. And every woman we spoke to told us about other women they knew who lost their jobs and struggled with the experience.
• No Similar Book in This Space:  While there are lots of books that deal with job search and several that talk specifically about being fired, no book addresses the emotional trauma that women go through when they are fired. It’s a gap in the market. Women need this book and will feel empowered after reading it.
• Ties into Emerging Workplace / Leadership Trend: The book ties into the growing field of emotional intelligence, especially in the workplace. We show that the termination process in most companies is extremely flawed, how it is flawed, the effects that these practices have on people, and suggest ways to improve job “endings.”

Recover from Job Loss with Support of Other Women

"This is the first book that I know of that truly helps you learn from women from many professional sectors how to recover from big setbacks in our work lives. It’s a must read.” —Dr. Elena Pezzini, organizational psychologist

#1 New Release in Job Hunting

Successful women show how they reclaimed and rebuilt their personal power and careers after being fired from a job and being rendered powerless by their employers.

Practical job loss recovery tools for women. When women get fired, it is often devastating, traumatic, and isolating. We experience a sudden powerlessness that can destroy our confidence and feelings of self-worth. We grieve. We feel broken. It affects our self-esteem, our financial well-being, our professional identity, and our ability to look for other work―in short, it affects our entire way of life. How, then, does a woman navigate the emotional impact of this event? With other women.

You are not alone. In Betrayed by Work, authors Julia Erickson, MBA, and Suzanne Vosburg, PhD, bear witness to the stories of women just like you―and just like them. This book shows how women lost their jobs, describes what happened to them immediately and in the aftermath, validates women’s feelings about being fired, and offers a source of hope and companionship to those of us coping with either our own job loss or the sudden job loss of someone we know or love.

Discover:

• True stories from women who are honest about how they were fired and their feelings
• Key points to help process each story and apply its lesson to your own experience
• Practical takeaways and suggestions to help you cope with job loss

If you were encouraged by personal growth books about women in business like Invaluable by Maya Grossman, In the Company of Women by Grace Bonney, Presence by Amy Cuddy, or Power Moves by Lauren McGoodwin, then you’ll be inspired and empowered by Betrayed by Work.

From the Introduction

 We began writing this book long before COVID-19. This was before those of us who could stay home, did stay home to minimize the transmission of coronavirus and to avoid overwhelming the healthcare system (‘flattening the curve’). It was also before tens of millions of jobs disappeared seemingly overnight.

As we write, 38.6 million jobless claims have been filed. This number increased by over 2 million since we checked last week. Companies large and small have laid off multitudes of workers. Sephora, Walt Disney, Marriott, JCPenney, Under Armour, Macy’s, GE and other Fortune 500 companies laid off thousands of workers, while smaller companies such as ZipRecruiter, Everlane and Shake Shack have laid off hundreds of workers, all at once. So many job cuts happened in so many sectors of the economy so suddenly that generalized headlines about the millions of jobs lost were often the first broad exposure to the magnitude of numbers. 

Considering that the job loss was at the macro-level, we wondered if the premise of our book still mattered. Were women still being let go from their jobs in ways that were traumatic and mean? Did we still think that there could be a more compassionate way of separating women from their work?

The answer to both questions is an unqualified YES.

Even though most of the stories in our book were collected before COVID-19, women’s experiences of losing their jobs and the emotional damage caused by this trauma is still the same. And these stories and their takeaways will help many women traverse the emotional journey to a new work life. In fact, Julie has taken on new clients during the pandemic who have lost their jobs, and she uses the lessons and practical takeaways from this book to help them process their experience, especially their emotional pain.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Chapter One: I’m What?!!
Chapter Two: Julie. Finding a Path after Betrayal
Chapter Three: Jennifer. I Discovered My Voice
Chapter Four: Bridget. I’m what?!
Chapter Five: Jessica. I Loved My Job and then It Broke My Heart
Chapter Six: Jane. Everybody Needs a Cheerleader
Chapter Seven: Elena. I No Longer Feel like a Victim
Chapter Eight: Melissa. From Corporate Constraints to Freedom
Chapter Nine: Anne. I Was Not Where I Needed to Be
Chapter Ten: Susana. It Takes Time and Courage to Transition
Chapter Eleven: Minerva. A Time-Out Led to Self-Transformation
Chapter Twelve: Rebecca. “Is this Legal?”
Chapter Thirteen: Birdie. “Don’t Worry, Honey. You’re a Smart Lady, You’ll Find Something.”
Chapter Fouteen: Cynthia. “We Still Find You Very Valuable....’’
Chapter Fifteen: Lu. Never Agree to Do Anything Unless You Research Who Is Doing It
Chapter Sixteen. Jean: “Twice Fired, Much Happier”
Chapter Seventeen: COVID-19. I Had Never Been Fired so Many Times in One Week Before
Chapter Eighteen: Madison
Chapter Nineteen: Kayala
Chapter Twenty: Lynn
Chapter Twenty-One: Nalini
Chapter Twenty-Two: Umara.
Chapter Twenty-Three: Kay
Chapter Twenty-Four: Sue/Janine
Chapter Twenty-Five: Women Helping Other Women. A Summary of Practical Takeaways
Chapter Twenty-Six: What People Say, Including You
Chapter Twenty-Seven: What We Have Learned and Other Closing Thoughts 
Chapter Twenty-Eight: Radical Firing. What Do We Suggest?

Conclusion
Endnotes
About the Authors