In my experience with layoffs at one company I worked for, job performance had nothing to do with it. Senior middle managers who were paid the most and received more benefits were given 15 minutes to clean out their desks, with security watching over them, and then “escorted” to the door like they were criminals. This was a decision imposed by a head office two thousand miles away that only considered the bottom line and nothing else. It left a demoralizing pall hanging over the company for quite a while.
Or it’s someone about whom it is known that they’re going to be leaving the company in a short time.
This happened to me many years ago; everyone knew that I was planning to go back to school, so when the axe fell, it was me. I didn’t mind, because I got severance pay, unemployment, and they also gave me 3 months of health insurance at no cost to me. Had I quit, that would have been it.
What about Arizona’s Bring Your Scorpion to Work Day?
That’s true for percentage reductions, but I’ve been in places where big projects were canceled, and then almost everyone on the project got let go. Good and bad. In one case there was actually a freeze on other hiring and there was a job fair where we lucky people got to make offers to those at risk. This wasn’t lip service - I got a real good programmer out of this process. Now everyone was also sending out resumes, so many good people who got other jobs in the company took jobs outside.
It is also the case that being a victim of a big layoff is not a blot on your record, especially since lots of hiring managers have gotten laid off at one time or another. Getting fired randomly however does not look so good.
This is pretty standard these days. Intel does it (though they deny it.) A performance review meeting that lasted until 9:30 pm partially to find a sacrifice to this stupid policy was the motivator for me to leave.
At Bell Labs we did what we called natural ranking, where we grouped people who seemed similar and had as many categories as seemed reasonable. I walked out of those meetings not feeling dirty.
I think Amazon more or less does this. (Not the other weird stuff.) My company, a major tech company, does also.
If you only have 25 - 35% of employees who deserve raises either your recruiting sucks, your management sucks, our your HR and top management suck. (It is the last case for us.)
Oddly enough, those who don’t expect to get a raise ever again until they leave sometimes do leave, but pretty much stop working extra hours. They noticed that the parking lot started filling up later and emptying earlier, and they had the nerve to force managers to read something about how hard we were supposed to work. My boss read it with a straight face, just barely. I like my boss.
In situations where layoffs will always be made by seniority or seniority/job classification (such as government agencies), managers have a duty to keep weak employees weeded out. It’s painful to do because the employee is usually doing at least some of the position’s work, while after they’re let go (a long, dreary process), it could be a year or more before they’re replaced. During that time everyone else will have to pick up the slack for the unfilled position.
But if the manager doesn’t do it, layoffs by seniority could leave the team minus some good workers while keeping some weak ones.
In our recent bankruptcy, it was layoff by seniority/job classification. The fund that was going negative was the general fund. Job classifications paid out of the general fund were pruned hard. Other funding is earmarked for specific things. Our department has access to several funding streams that can’t be used as general funds. In addition, we’re always writing grants, so most of our salaries are paid through grants or grants and specific funds. Laying anyone from our section off would not have saved any general fund money, so none of us were considered for layoff.
I’ve worked for companies that used RIFs to get rid of crap performers. And also older ones. And also some who are medically expensive. And then they publish a list of ages and titles of those RIF’ed and goddfamn if it isn’t a perfect fucking bell curve on age!
My feelings exactly.
Had a boss that’d praise you for 51.9 weeks, then rake you over the coals at your performance review: “…and given all these shortcomings, I don’t see how we could possibly give you a raise this year.”
Did he not think we’d all compare notes and find out he pulled the same thing with everyone? I could’ve fought it and tried to get documentation, but quitting was a lot more satisfying.
I worked at a place that had a nicer policy. It was their informal (unwritten) but explicit spoken policy that annual performance reviews should never have any surprises.
You’re equating two different dynamics. In your first scenario, a company will always separate the lesser workers first, unless cost is such a factor where they will tolerate lesser talented workers over higher paid talent.
Currently our Performance Management system means that you are 25% more likely to be in the ‘must improve’ category if you are,
Female
Above 55
From an ethnic minority
working part time
Those in the ‘exceeded’ category are 25% more likely to be there if…
White
Male
Between 30-45
Above band 6 (out of 11 grade levels)
The current sticking plaster to correct this 10 years worth of discrimination is to put those white middle aged males on ‘unconscious bias’ training.
It won’t work, the only thing that will work is to change the mix of managers, and comes down to the interview and appointment opportunities.
I’ll bet you cannot guess who makes up the vast majority of our middle and lower managers?
Result a workforce that fully understands the working expectations, you attend and do a job, not a good one, nor a bad one, just one that more or less meets the requirements.
Ah the glories of centrally controlled management from an office in London, hundreds of miles away.
Don’t people realize how important employee morale is?
They do, they just stopped giving a shit.