The board has decided – we have to let people go. The axe swingeth. Who does it hit? Often the blade chops through large teams. The rationale being something like “there’s 50 of them – they can cope as a team of 40”. In some ways this looks more achievable, and perhaps desirable than “this team of four couldn’t possibly function if it got any smaller”.
Let’s say the team of 50 are front line customer service folk earning £25,000 each, and the team of four are management folk earning £100,000 each. Now I don’t know about you but in my experience bigger organisations can often cope with the loss of one of the management team much better than the loss of several front line staff. Trouble is – this is a headcount reduction you see, so in this case four is better than one. You don’t suppose these things are designed like this to protect the more senior folk do you?
I recall a division of a big company going through a round of voluntary redundancies. It was announced and presented along with an organisation chart mainly consisting of blank spaces. The blank spaces numbered fewer than the current number of people. Reapply for your job á la musical chairs. What struck me was that the first page of the chart was already complete. The Managing Director and all his reports were deemed essential. Now there’s a funny thing eh?
No one likes having to get rid of people, but surely trying to achieve a reduction in the paybill is at least as valid a way of managing the challenge?