Overview

Staff reductions can occur under a variety of names re-engineering, cutbacks, rightsizing, downsizing, etc. They can also happen for a variety of reasons. Some examples might be when new technology comes along and allows a business to do the same amount of work with fewer people, when orders do not come in as fast as you planned, or when the direction of a program is changed or the program is completed or terminated. Each of these plus many more possibilities demands a reduction in manpower, both in the factory and in the offices, and this is a prospect that is not easy to deal with for either management or the people affected. While leaders would like to ensure they keep the best people even if they shuffle them around, that is not always possible. Good people may not want to be shuffled. Managers to whom they could be transferred might prefer to keep the team they already have. In addition, the best people can usually get other jobs with relative ease, and so they are not likely to live in limbo.

Many feel that hiring people is a much easier prospect. Unfortunately, while that may be true most of the time, people selection skills are hard to come by. I was fortunate to take a course on intensive interviewing from a man with the unfortunate name of Dick Fear. While this course gave me an excellent guide for selecting people, it was not a panacea for everything. For one thing,...