Obviously, there will always be underperforming employees who need to be let go, after reasonable efforts are made to accommodate and level up. And serious eco

Obviously, there will always be underperforming employees who need to be let go, after reasonable efforts are made to accommodate and level up. And serious economic conditions require layoffs when company survival is at stake. But, I think there is also a poorly recognized tension between two ideals. The first is where nobody who is performing well is ever let go. The second is where every employee a firm has, are the ones they would hire today, for today's needs. Firms accumulate employees, but as the firms needs change, a slow, subtle but widespread gap opens up between these two ideals. Hiring is not easy, but at least it is intentional. Retention is the opposite of intentional. It is very much default. I may be wrong, but I think mass layoffs, and harsh ranking systems, are often the blunt ways that this tension gets released. In lieu of a more explicit direct fix. -- What would a better system be? Start by characterizing the problem. Employees that drive change are most valuable. Next valuable are employees that proactively adapt to changes, with their own initiative. Then employees that adapt well under direction. Finally, good employees who are not so proactively adaptable may start out looking as valuable (to the company) as the others, but if they just remain good employees, their value relative to the cost and management complexity savings of an absence followed by a new hire, is seeping away. So the first step is for a firm to explicitly communicate that proactively leveraging change by EVERY individual employee, including the CEO, is the foundation of any long term job security. The second step, is to recognize that competence and retention are not tied together, and to give employees who are no longer today's best fit very generous packages to reflect they were successful employees. So successful employees leave on positive terms they knew they could count on. The details in between? I am not qualified to design the rest of this system!