Introduction

The year 2024 has brought a wave of layoffs across industries, leaving many employees and managers grappling with uncertainty. Companies like Amazon, Paramount Global, Citigroup, Google, BlackRock, and Cisco have trimmed their workforces, contributing to a sense of unease in the job market. In this challenging landscape, the impact on employee morale is profound. Survivors of layoffs are facing reduced trust, commitment, and job satisfaction, with a significant portion worrying about potential job loss.

Understanding the Challenge as a Manager

As a manager, navigating low employee morale is a formidable task. Even if your organization hasn't experienced layoffs, the prevailing stress in the air demands attention. How can you uplift your team members' spirits and maintain productivity amid uncertainty? Here are strategies to address low employee morale effectively:

1. Address the Situation Honestly

If your company has undergone layoffs, acknowledging the challenges openly is crucial. Team members may be feeling insecure, experiencing survivor's guilt, or doubting the company's stability. In a team meeting, candidly discuss the difficulty of navigating uncertain environments and emphasize your commitment to supporting and advocating for your team members.

2. Lead with Transparency

During unstable times, transparency becomes a beacon of assurance. Emphasize the information you have and make it clear that your team can rely on you to be transparent. Share updates as you receive them, providing clarity on how to move forward. Even when there's no specific information to share, the act of being open fosters greater trust among your team members.

UX design portfolio

For UX designers, online portfolios are probably the most popular type today. This can be in the form of a simple one-page website with your contact information or a more thorough online gallery site. If your main discipline is web design, a portfolio website is the choice for you. It serves as an example itself of your web design skills, as well as highlighting your best work where it’s meant to be seen.Portfolio websites come with many benefits, especially as most of our work is done online. First, they can show off design properties like animation and interactivity.

As an important part of UX design, it’s important to show these aspects so viewers get the full experience of your designs. Next, website portfolios are super easy to share. You can include the link in your social media bios as well as send the link to anyone at any time. Your work will become more readily available this way. Finally, online portfolios are a great way to show off your personality. As the more new-age mention of displaying your work, you are less constrained by the rules of the classic print portfolio.

When going the online portfolio route there are some drawbacks. First, website portfolios often require knowledge of code to create. This can be a blocker for many UX designers. However, there are increasingly more tools like Framer that allow you to create a design portfolio without code. Next, you have to keep in mind the constraints of the web. Things like breakpoints, different browsers, and rendering issues that you wouldn’t have to think about in print portfolios. Finally, website portfolios can be more time-consuming to create depending on how many site pages you need.