"...and how has the current recession affected you?" This was a curiosity for me: what would the HR professionals be doing with people when there is not enough market demand to keep the employees productively employed.
"Not much, really!! We have managed it well," he said. "In fact, we just concluded an Employee Alignment and Optimization initiative last week."
"Employee Alignment and Optimization" seemed such a sexy term. It conjoured up images of a happy bunch of people being helped by my friend and his HR team to bring their interest and capabilities in-synch with their work and performance.
"That’s really nice! You mean, you assessed and re-allocated them so that they get to do what they are really capable of doing, and enjoy doing?”
He looked aghast and uncomfortable. “No! no!,” he said. “This was actually an initiative to disengage about 200 of them from the organization.”
“You mean, you fired them?!!” I was startled, not being sure how can one “optimize” and “align” people by firing them.
“No, actually, we didn’t have to fire them, at all,” he beamed, happily. “ In fact, as we had planned, it was a voluntary separation. It was really a very smooth process.”
I was thoroughly impressed. “That’s really remarkable!,” I said with awe. “ It says so much about the level of commitment you must have fostered among the people, that they could make such a sacrifice for the larger good of the organization. Imagine!... you send out a mail saying that we need 200 volunteers to leave the organization – and people actually volunteer.”
My friend looked at me as if I had lost my beans. “Of course, Not! It was not like that at all!!” he almost choked. “This was a very systematic and thorough exercise; we planned it with precision, and with full confidentiality; and we trained our HR and line executives to communicate the choice to the 200 of our employees who had be separated.”
Read on to find out the rest of the conversation and what really happened.
Read the full article... it is better to say straight away that certain employees are being sacked because of their lower perfromance wrt company expectations or teh ROI on such employees is -ve for the company..
ReplyDeletethe HR person is only beating around the bush and has no strategical view in place..
he is apparently only achiveing "his own goals"
Hi Gautam,
ReplyDeleteI have also seen a lot of HR Managers very eager to lay off/chop/rightsize/ downsize their workforce during these challenging times. But I really wonder how many of them ever thought of alternative positive steps before reaching such a decision? What were these managers doing when the times were good? Did they ever think about continuous improvement or enhancing Productivity?
I definitely think NOT! Profit at all cost seemed to be the only objective! And now when the tide has turned they are the first to advocate terminal suggestions! Most Indian corporates have begun to copy cat the American System of Hire and Fire without understanding its cultural implications within the organisation. For a long time experts have advocated on how people related productivity measures have enabled the eastern economies to tide over the slowdown and also avoid massive layoffs. A Long term strategy from the HR Desk is clearly missing in this case.
As Mr. Anonymous has stated above, the HR person is only trying to save his own skin!
And by the way, I also worked as an HR Professional in a Tier I IT Services company which recently laid off 10 percent of its global workforce.