how to lay people off the right way

In a recent post, Guy Kawasaki pointed to his article on “the Art of Laying People Off.”  Of course, we all hope you never have to use this advice, but he has compiled a great list of how to do it, if needed.

He points to leadership and the need to take responsibility.  Don’t blame the economy.  Don’t try to make it sound like your management team, your CEO, your President, haven’t been making decisions that helped get your company to this place.  Communicate.  Communicate clearly.  And take responsibility.  

In fact, if you’re a leader in your company, you should be doing this already.  I know of one manager who admits that his style is to frighten people.  Yep.  He rather enjoys using fear as a motivational tool.  Do you have a manager like that?  Maybe she’s sitting in your management meetings agreeing with your chosen strategy.  But then she’s going back to her people and fueling the rumor-mill fires saying things like, “I don’t know.  It’s tough out there.  We’re going to try not to lay anyone off.  But we’ll have to see how it goes.”  

Don’t let that happen.  While that manager might believe this is motivational, when people are worried about losing their jobs, their productivity plummets.  They don’t look for new ways of doing things in a changing economy, they just walk around with white-knuckles doing what they can and keeping their head down.  Plus, they start to share what they’ve heard and the conjecture about when the inevitable layoffs are going to happen.  

This would also be the time when your key players, the people you wouldn’t layoff until you closed the doors (the ones with the choices) will probably start putting feelers out there to see what other opportunities might be available to them.  If you wait too long and you aren’t communicating, you could end up losing ‘the good ones.’ 

One point Guy makes has to do with severance pay.  Saying you have to cut costs while paying out big severance packages doesn’t make much sense to me either.  Except that not providing a severance package to people you’re laying off through no fault of their own (and poor management decisions), seems a bit inhumane.  Pay the severance.  Find the money elsewhere to pay the severance.  Maybe your CEO could give up the golden parachute, and pay the severance.  Maybe your entire management team could take a salary cut and pay the severance.  You could cut your fleet of cars you provide to management and sales and pay the severance.  

Oh.  And you could cut out the parties.  Seriously.  If you haven’t already re-thought those holiday parties, while rumors of people getting laid off are running rampant?   Do it now.  Employees really do get that those parties cost money.  A lot of money.  Talk about sending the wrong message!  

If you are in the unfortunate position of having to make cuts, check out Guy’s article.  Take it to your management team.  And then please try to do it right.  

All the best!

deb

P.S.  If you’re one of those worried being laid off, you can check out tips on dealing with that here, here, and here.  (More to come on that later too.)

P.S.  If you’re facing layoffs in your company or are, as most of us are, having to re-think  the way things have always been done and do them differently -- check out my program on managing change for leaders.  Or  Click here for information on how the Toyota Production System can apply to any business, including yours.

Comments

[Tracee Sioux]

Followed you here from Martha Beck's Team. :) my hubby was on the line for layoff and I wasn't worried at all. I'm on the team dude. on the team.