“Every employee you terminate is likely a customer, a reference, and a possible rehire.” Josh Bersin comes to us with this warning in his recent piece, Be Careful With the Layoffs. While slowing economies do often result in companies turning to a reduction in staff to stay afloat, there are alternatives to consider that can create both a better working environment and strong business outcomes.
According to Wayne Casio’s research on this, the true source of organizational issues is rarely employees and labor costs. When workers are let go from an organization, they take the potential for business innovation and renewal with them. So, how can People and Talent teams stay proactive in the face of a slowing economy?
You’ve likely worked for years to develop an employer brand and employee value proposition (EVP) that have attracted talent to your organization. This unique EVP has been based on your values, culture, work environment, salary, and benefits. Does that just disappear if you need to lay off staff? Bersin and Casio agree—that should not be the case.
We’ve outlined four strategies to help you intentionally staff your team to avoid layoffs and stay ready for changes in business during the highest highs and the lowest lows.
- Hire for growth and flexibility
Hiring with a growth mindset means choosing the talent who are agile and adaptable to changing environments —with skills that can be redeployed when required. Casio shares that redeploying employees is a great alternative to layoffs when you need to make structural business changes due to slowing economies. However, that’s not possible if your internal talent doesn’t already have a wide range of skills, to begin with. Recruiters and hiring managers alike can be coached to hire talent with diverse skillsets as a part of your talent acquisition strategy. This then offers more opportunities to cross-train employees to meet your talent needs when the time is right. These employees are also great focus groups when it comes to gathering ideas to differentiate your business in the short term. Encourage hiring managers to think this way and structure roles this way. This will support their desire to both retain the top talent that they have and reduce headcount costs. - Be creative
While change is the only constant and can understandably be met with strong emotions and reactions from employees, it’s important to remember that most people are very reasonable. There may be alternatives available that employees would gladly entertain as an alternative to complete layoffs. This is an opportunity to be creative about what some cutbacks could look like without doing away with entire roles. Perhaps there’s an opportunity for job sharing, reduced hours and wages, or temporarily pausing employee engagement perks to preserve budget. - Have an internal mobility strategy
Internal mobility is important for all organizations. It helps provide growth opportunities for employees, increases retention, and cultivates a culture where skills are continuously developed, top talent is elevated, and professional goals can be achieved. Equipping your talent acquisition team with an internal mobility strategy will provide a framework for transitioning employees from one internal role to the next.
Getting this right before layoffs are even a part of the conversation is paramount. And using recruitment and retention software with career pathing opportunities keeps employees in the loop on what roles are available, when. If redeployment becomes your chosen alternative to reducing your workforce, there would already be a system in place with open roles that employees could access.
- Remain agile and ready to pivot
An agile recruiting approach helps talent acquisition teams meet changing business needs rapidly. Gartner identifies key pillars to agile recruiting, saying that agile talent teams should:
- Shift away from fixed planning and resourcing
- Focus on talent trends, not current business needs
- Develop more sophisticated predictive talent analytics
Some ways of going about this can start at the team level by having recruiters specialize in specific talent segments. Then they can act as subject matter experts when it comes to guiding the rest of the team on an increase in open roles for a specific department —whether internal or external. This strategy becomes even stronger when you have reliable talent pipeline analytics preferably housed within a candidate relationship system (CRM) to maintain your talent pipeline data. Then you’re ready to mobilize, attract, nurture, and hire at a moment’s notice. No matter what stage of hiring you’re facing.
There are numerous options to consider prior to deciding that layoffs are necessary for your organization. By showing your employees how values-driven your approach is to attracting, hiring, and growing talent within your organization, you are in turn building an employer brand and EVP that resonates within your culture. The above strategies are things to consider throughout the entire talent acquisition lifecycle and will pay dividends if layoffs are something that must be considered.
If that day does come, make sure your employer brand and EVP continue to shine through the release of any layoff information, all communications, exit packages, support to employees, and feedback mechanisms. There is no over-doing how intentional you should be with this approach. Remember: “Every employee you terminate is likely a customer, a reference, and a possible rehire.”
Bersin believes that if you take the economic slowdown seriously and consider a variety of angles to solve your business problems, you can make your company even stronger. We at ClinchTalent agree.
