Reduction in Force

Layoffs

Firings

Unanticipated Workforce Contraction

House Cleaning

Company Response to Market Forces

Business Re-Focus or Re-prioritization

Corporate Re-alignment

Shift in Direction

Trimming the Fat

< enter euphemism of your choice here. >

 

What it boils down to is people out of work. Good people. Contributors. People with families. Folks who add real value to an organization. This is not inspired by economic downturn, nor by recession, nor by stock markets, nor by lending crisis. This is just short sighted, stupid management trying to correct their mistakes at others' expenses.

 

But I digress.

 

What am I talking about? well, at my company yesterday, and today, we had some people who had to pack their personal belongings and were shown the door. Their services apparently are no longer required. It may have been the right thing to do. Maybe not. Whatever. Anytime I see this maneuver in business, I consider it a complete failure of management at the highest level. And a certain vote of no-confidence. I am not complaining about this from a worker-bee viewpoint. I am taking more of a holistic view - we hired those people for a reason. We spent time and money finding them, interviewing them, hiring them and training them. This is a lose-lose situation of the highest order. Bad manager. No Pizza.

 

Again, I digress.

 

It also seems that it is much harder on the people left behind than the people who were escorted out the door. The impact to productivity and morale is far more of a real cost I think than it would have been to keep the people on and put them to productive work, even if it were non-billable work. More work is coming. Or maybe it really isn't? Thats the greater worry.

 

Trend of digression.

 

Anyway... we lost some people. It ain't office space. C'est la vie. Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose. Merde. Pardon my french.