Sunday, October 3, 2010
The Survival of the Safest
This article suggested a very interesting analogy: a battlefield triage in war compared to a business manager in recession. A little harsh but seemingly true. Just like a triage would have to decide who to help for the good of the unit, a business manager has to decide who to keep and who to layoff in troubling times. Managers will typically make layoffs in higher numbers than necessary initially to ensure that they won't have to make a scene more than once (to keep morale up) and they keep only those who are most loyal and effective to try and minimize loss to the company. During these rough economic times layoffs seem better then keeping all employees and cutting everyone's pay by a percentage. This can create tension in the work places for those employees left and to a pessimistic attitude toward the workplace for those laid off and for those whom they influence. This tension and pessimism leads to a lack of creativity and innovation in the workplace because people are too scared to try new things because they might lose their job or cut into potential benefits--in turn this is contributing to the market recovering so slowly because new opportunities are not being created as often.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
This is an interesting take on the current job recession and the slow market recovery. I agree that with a higher occurrence of layoffs, the more emotional stress the company faces with it's employees increases. It is interesting to see whether a company would rather risk lowering the wages and hope their employees will stay, or layoff workers and risk the unhappiness of the employees that stay. I think this is a huge contributor to the current unemployment rate, and the growing dissatisfaction with larger firms. Even with the slow growth of opportunities to work, some people may still feel deterred to begin if a company is laying people off, or lowering wages. We must figure out a way to create opportunities for the unemployed, but keep the happiness of the already employed still in mind.
ReplyDeleteDamage to moral is one of the more significant weaknesses to the US economy. Furthermore, keeping employees relatively idle and lowering their wages will hurt everyone and decrease productivity. Also, the article says that it is better to keep the crucial labor and to do mass layoffs to the less crucial workers because they say that this will reduce the negative energy in the workplace. I don't agree because isn't that a major sign of lower expectations?
ReplyDelete