During these tough economic times, organizations of all types: public - with the exception of the federal government - NGO's and private, are facing the difficult decision of laying employees off in order to adjust to the present economic conditions, this is being done, while trying to maintain the overall bottom lines.
During March, 2009, New York Governor David Paterson ordered 8,900 state layoffs after employee unions refused concessions. In a time of "unprecedented fiscal emergency," New York state was "left with no other option" than a state workforce reduction of about 8,900 employees to achieve the savings it needed, according to a memo from the governor's office (Pepitone, 2009, para. 2). California Governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, has also ordered some 200,000 state employees to take unpaid leave days, in what will be the state's first ever furloughs. Amongst the offices forced to close were the Department of Motor Vehicles and the Department of Consumer Affairs. The governor's Office of Emergency Services also was dark as part of the cash-saving move ordered by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (“Furlough Friday,” 2009); this, as he warns that as many as 5,000 state employees may be laid off in the near future.
Things are not much better in our private sector, with major losses in the financial, construction and manufacturing industries due to the mortgage and housing troubles, an U.S. automakers in the brink of bankruptcy; today's managers must be quick on their feet to get more from their employees. Thus, the question which comes to mind for leaders, is how can managers achieve more from their current staff, as this seems to keep reducing in size?
Both, human resources managers and supervisors have in hand the tough job of selecting the appropriate candidates for a job, but even a more difficult task, is to inform employees that they are being laid off, while maintaining, what I will call, a ‘sense of order' in the remaining staff, as the employees who continue in thepayroll books, become anxious as to what their futures will be with the organization, once their see many of their friends and colleagues in the cubicle next to them gone, eventually, some will begin to assume that they will probably be loosing their jobs in the organization's next wave of lay-offs.
For leaders this can turn out to be either a positive or negative event in their departments and as your read this, you may wonder how layoffs can become positive for a leaders. Well, a manager can capitalize layoffs by clarifying roles and objectives with the remaining staff in their departments. In his book Leadership in Organizations, 6th edition, Gary Yulk (2006), emphasize the importance of clarifying roles and objectives the following manner:
Clarifying is the communication of plans, policies, and roles expectations. Major subcategories of clarifying include (1) defining job responsibilities and requirements, (2) setting performance goals, and (3) assigning specific tasks. It is essential for each subordinate to understand what duties, functions, and activities are required in the job and what results are expected.
Therefore, layoffs will create significant opportunities for managers and team leaders to:
o Reemphasize the importance of their employees' job functions, by explaining how their duties, sometimes new ones, will affect the organization's long term strategies.
o Clarify and correct old behaviors that were damaging to the department and did not support team cohesiveness, or made the department less productive.
o Shift staff to perform jobs that are more in line with a particular set of skills an employee may have.
o Lastly, assist the leader develop a trust relationship with his/her subordinates.
Now, let's look at possible approaches leaders could initiate to achieve more with less from their human capital:
Corporate Cultures: Leaders at the organization need to develop or reinvent a corporate culture; this of course, is no easy task, especially when the organization has just laid off several employees. However, managers can modify the visible aspects of culture, such as language, stories, rite, ritual, and sagas. They can change the lessons to be drawn from common stories and even encourage individuals to see the reality they see. They can create new rites and rituals. This takes time and enormous energy, but the long-run benefits can also be great. Top managers, in particular, can set the tone for a culture and for cultural change (Shermerhorn, Hunt, Osborn, 2005, p. 448), thus, layoffs can become an opportunity to re-adjust the organization's culture and reengineer the level of commitment from its leadership and to its employees. This brings me to next approach, which helps conquer the search for reengineering.
Empowerment: With layoffs, front line employees are not always the only ones affected, and thus, in many cases management positions are not spare from layoffs, as there is less employees to supervise, moreover, the leaders that do remain should look at empowering their employees as a way to not only cope with the layoff of other management positions, but as a way to motivate those employees who are left to higher levels of performance and productivity. Gill Hickman, Leading Organizations - Perspective for a New Era, 1998, writes the following regarding empowerment: “Empowerment forms the backbone of many approaches to organization change, such as total quality management, reengineering, and self managed teams.” He adds that when leaders empower their followers they affect them in two ways. They can inspire them directly or facilitate their performance in a way that motivates them to do more and lastly, he makes a good observation for leaders, “Associates cannot be expected to assume new functional responsibilities and authority without a great deal of guidance and support from their leaders.” (Hickman, 1998). Hickman's last statement, leads me to my last approach.
Training & Learning Opportunities: As employees are inversed in the new culture or sub-culture - if we are only looking at a department or division of a larger organization - and are empowered to make decisions affecting the organizations internal and external customers; they will need training that will help them improve performance and become more productive, this does not necessarily means the organizations needs to spend thousands of dollars training all employees, this is equally important to keep in mind, as layoffs occur, there is a high possibility that there will also be less training dollars in the overall organization's budget; however, when referring to training, there are several cost efficient and creative ways to get your stretched personnel, trained up. Here are a few less expensive training methods, obtained and summarized from Human Resources Management - gaining a competitive advantage, by Noe, Hollengeck, Gerhart and Wright (2006):
1. Hands-on methods, such as: on-the-job-training, (OJT), simulation, business games, case studies and Web-based or E-learning, which actively involve the trainee in learning, and are ideal for developing specific skills or understanding how skills and behaviors can be transferred to the job.
2. Cross-training, in this type of training, team members learn to understand and practice each other's job and skills, so that members are prepared to step in and take another member's place, very effective and significant for organizations which are slashing their personnel numbers.
3. Group building or team training, these techniques help trainees share ideas and experiences, it also helps to coordinate the performance of individuals who work together to achieve a common goal. Such training is an important issue when information must be shared and individuals affect the overall performance of a group.
In summary, although many are affected by the disruptive aftermath of layoffs; the organization itself, internal and external clients and customers, leaders, managers, supervisors, and more importantly, one of our most valuable resources: employees. With this article, I tried to address some of the potential and constructive approaches, leaders can utilize to achieve more with less human capital, as the present financial crisis takes a toll on many industries and organizations across the U.S. and employees are laid off; we as leaders, need to learn how to deal with this phenomenon, while at the same time encouraging our remaining workforce to do more and as we know by now, in most cases, more, will not necessarily represent a pay increase or incentive for them.