Sunday, February 8, 2009

Managing layoffs

Almost everyone I talk to is managing layoffs or a victim of layoffs. The question that I continue to ask is how organizations are making layoff decisions and if anyone is comfortable with the decision rules.

How do you know that you are keeping the best talent or the people most likely qualified to help your organization grow when the economy starts to turn around? Is anyone out there doing anything innovative? Or are most organizations still using tenure as the rule?

I did a webinar last week on relational capital, and we discussed whether organizations know what relationships are walking out the door with their employees? We talked about whether you could really do this, and we brainstormed a few ideas.

1. Maybe as you are walking the employee out the door, he/she will not be too happy to tell you about all the relationships they are taking with them, but you can plan ahead. Rather than just keeping lists of names in your CRM system, do relationship audits. Or create ways to measure relational capital on a regular basis.

2. Use your outplacement providers. Can they do an audit as part of their exit interviews, and then they can share these data with the organization?

Any more suggestions? Let us know.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Great post. I think that the best way for an organization to make good decisions in determining who to lay off begins with having clear expectations of employees. It is also important to have clear ways of measuring their performance via standards developed by both the employer and employee. Finally, when layoffs need to occur (if they need to occur), a culture of transparency and openness goes a long way toward minimizing damage.

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