The Art of the Layoff

Signum sine tinnitu--by Guy Kawasaki: The Art of the Layoff - found this interesting link whilst reading the mini-microsoft blog.  The guy makes a lot of very sensible point, however I (as well as one of the commenters) disagree with this point;

" Show people the door. With few exceptions, all you should do is let people finish the day—maybe the week. (My theory is that Friday is the best day to do a layoff because it lets people have a weekend to decompress.).."

Monday is the best day to do the deed. It allows the axed employee to start getting on with the rest of their life, sort out unemployment benefits (if neccessary), sending out that CV (you have been keeping it up-to-date! Right!) and other such matters that really can only happen on a weekday. 

Getting axed on a Friday means you have the whole weekend to stew on the decision and you cannot really start going about picking up the pieces again and moving on.  You've also added 2 days in the time to the next job.

One might also add not to do it in July or August as generally (in Europe anyway) the decision makers for the next job will all be on holiday.

I totally agree with;

"Cut deep and cut once. Management usually believes that things will get better soon, so it cuts the smallest number of people in anticipation of a miracle. Most of the time the miracle doesn’t materialize, and the company ends up making multiple cuts.

Given the choice, you should cut too deeply and risk the high-quality problem of having to rehire. If nothing else, it enables you to declare victory: “We’ve turned things around and we’re hiring again.” By contrast, multiple cuts are terrible for the morale of the employees who have not been laid off."

As I previously worked in a company that had layoffs in 4 rounds spread over 7 months.  the first cull happened around Easter time almost in secret; the relevent HR manager went from office to office setting up shop and "inviting" employees into his (hastily setup) room to give them their invitation to leave. In one instance the account manager had just returned from an afternoon at the client persuading them they needed a WAP site only to discover that the WAP developer had been given his marching orders.

As this progressed so too did the morale damaging rumors.  I'm not sure management ever really acknowledged this either.

The third one was blamed on the 11/09 (or is that 9/11) effect and slightly better organised in that we were all called to meetings in the various offices and told that when we got back to our desks the ones that were to leave would find "invites" from HR.

The fourth one was late in the year.  This one got me.  It gave me the kick up the bum to actually go and find something better. Which I did. However I'd chosen to stay (yeah we got a choice too).  So I chanced it and asked if the offer wsas still available. It was. So I left with a bunch of cash, the rest of December off and a new job with better pay, more holiday and better hours.

technorati tags:redundancies, layoffs, dotcom, netdecisions

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