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I get the need to improve productivity but blind mandates suggest that something else is wrong. At yet another employer they did a very well thought out layoff
by mathattack 13y ago
I get the need to improve productivity but blind mandates suggest that something else is wrong.
At yet another employer they did a very well thought out layoff of approx 15% of the workforce. It was very well thought out and preceded by 6 months of heavy analysis on new ways to work. The culture was hurt but the firm saw process improvements too. Perhaps it was too easy as every time management needed to cut after that, they skipped the process improvement step.
- JoeAltmaier 13y agoI guess I see it differently. It seems to me that you can cut back, and enter the profit-margin-death-spiral. Or you can invest in new growth. And our site had the highest return on investment in the company. Cutting back was suicide. In fact, that's how it played out - declining revenues due to a stagnant product line, for years. I work at a startup now.
- mathattack 13y agoI'm with you - I just don't think I wrote clearly enough above. If a company blindly cuts every division the same amount, it's dumb. 20% across the board cuts penalize the productive too much, and don't cut the unproductive enough. It's better to get the same cost savings by shutting down or stopping unproductive activities, letting go or selling the least productive activities, and investing in the future. You can still get the 20% personnel cut, but some places lose 50% of their staff, and others gain staff.