If you the Ravens, and you’d better, you’ve seen the AirTran commercial where the employee is laid off by phone. The chuckling boss tells the stunned worker, “It’s just business.”
The employee flies (AirTran, of course) to New York, where the smug supervisor is at a conference claiming, “Every employee is valuable to us,” and, “Our profits are the highest they have been in the history of our company.” The angry employee tackles the boss like Ray Lewis laying out one of the Titans.
That’s not how it is supposed to be.
Like it or not, it’s a topic we have to discuss. The national unemployment rate has spiked to 7.2 percent and will likely increase. Maryland’s rate is still 5.3, but companies are shedding jobs. Towson-based Black & Decker is cutting 125 employees. Catonsville’s Erickson Retirement Communities will cut approximately 260 jobs. Local financial giant Legg Mason said in December it was slicing 200 positions. The beat goes on.
You know your business better than anyone — accountants, employees, customers and even the IRS. You’ve trimmed excess spending — travel, conferences, entertainment. You’ve even turned down the thermostat and canceled free coffee. And still the numbers don’t work.
The only thing left is staffing.
You can ask for or institute company-wide salary cuts. That can keep most or all of your workers employed É for now, but it can create morale problems for even your best staff. Then you are left with 100 percent of your workers unhappy.
Or you can do layoffs.
Layoffs stink — for everyone. But if you have to do them, you have a moral responsibility to do them properly. You have to treat every laid-off worker like a human being.
First, you have to determine who goes. People who are top-flight performers stay. So do the people who bring in money — salespeople, especially. If a decent salesman pays his way and more, then he is worth keeping. If he doesn’t bring in enough to pay his salary and benefits, then the choice is easier.
Try to identify the positions you can shed that won’t hurt the organization too much. Don’t think about Ricky’s two children or Lucy’s sick mom. Focus on the mission. Check with supervisors. See who each department head or middle-level manager thinks is essential.
Then, as you work up your list, run it by human resources. Make sure you aren’t raising any racial or age discrimination problems, just for example. Don’t lay off someone two weeks before retirement or who you just discovered is pregnant or has a serious illness. Lawyers love that kind of case. So do juries.
Now decide how to treat the people leaving. Focus on a few key things: severance, medical benefits, outplacement help if possible and references.
Build a package and write it up so that each person will have a copy.
Then you have to meet with the workers and their supervisors — one at a time. Tell each the truth about how the downturn is hurting your company. Be honest. Be sincere. Be human.
Remember the golden rule. Someday soon you might be in their shoes.
Dan Gainor can be seen Thursdays on Foxnews.com’s “Strategy Room.” He is a T. Boone Pickens Fellow at the Media Research Center’s Business & Media Institute, a career journalist and a media commentator. He can be reached at [email protected].
