Why you should step down before laying off staff

The entire concept of restructuring, downsizing, right sizing and job rationalisation have different meanings to different people at different times. Illustration/Joseph Barasa  Nation Media Group

By Dr Frank Njenga

I am in charge of the HR department in a company that plans massive restructuring come January 2014. Staff cuts will form a key part of these changes and I’m worried due to what has happened in the past.

Employees who have left have painted the company in bad light such that even attracting good talent has become a problem. How should I prepare the current team of workers for the changes coming in January so that the company‘s reputation does not suffer again?

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I am not sure you are the right person to head the HR department and before you let others go, and on the assumption that you care in the least about the company, it might be useful for you to look at yourself (and the entire HR team) before the January deadline.

I am not sure how you arrived at the decision to restructure and more importantly, you do not give us any idea of what you hope to achieve in the process.

The entire concept of restructuring, downsizing, right sizing and job rationalisation have different meanings to different people at different times.

In your case, it seems as though a date has been set and as you have done in the past, a number of people must go and then you must hire yet more to replace those who have gone and your fear is that you might not attract talented staff. You surprise me by being surprised that good employees might fear joining your company.

You seem to be a victim of your own methods and before you fire the present crop, satisfy yourself that letting them go is the best option for the company.

You might, for example, be in the business of making flour or butter or even cars. Your core business, therefore, is that of manufacturing.

If you run a hospital, then your core activity is health care delivery and your nurses are at the centre of all that you do. Finance, administration, HR and transport departments exist to support the core function of nursing.

Whatever else you do as a HR department you must have a happy, qualified, competent and loyal compliment of staff at the core of your operations. We have seen companies that have failed to grasp this essential component and have repeatedly changed finance department heads, or even IT experts in the team because of failure to achieve targets.

In some of the cases we have looked at, the problem lies not in those departments but in say, the manufacturing or nursing teams, in the case of hospitals.
A core team can fail to deliver because of many reasons.

By their very nature, human beings like to be respected, trusted, valued and recognised for their efforts.

An extreme example of failure to recognise and reward a core team was brought to my attention from an unlikely source. In a social gathering, a senior pilot gave an example of ways in which a pilot could express displeasure with his employer.

He spoke about “hard landing”. He explained that although passengers were not put at any risk by this method of “protest” the aircraft itself did suffer long term damage from the frequent hard landings. He explained that this was similar to an unhappy driver seeking revenge on his boss by careless driving, knowingly hitting potholes and in the process causing car damages.