UBS has informed to cut 11,000 jobs, the day before Nissan reported to cut 20,000 jobs. We listen to this kind of news daily. Economists estimate that about 50 million jobs will be crossed worldwide because of the actual financial crisis. It means that legions of employees will lose their jobs. This kind of conventional labour management causes misery for uncountable individuals and their families.
No layoffs ever: 9 US companies are shining
CNN Money has presented recently 9 of the Fortune500 enterprises that never have had a layoff of employees. This is a very remarkable exception and achievement in a time of daily news about mass dismissals of workers. The presented companies operate in different industries: retail, energy, insurance, online stock brokerage. It is worthwhile to analyse the stories about that companies in order to find out why they could avoid layoffs of staff. Some of these companies are alive for decades and they never have dismissed employees although they also have experienced economic ups and downs during such a long life span.
Is there a clever business management system in order to avoid layoffs of employees?
How layoffs of employees can be prevented
• It seems that it is an intention of all that nine companies to avoid layoffs. It is part of their philosophy. They therefore adopt a long-term sight of their business. They do not grasp for short term profits. They aim longevity. They maintain an open-minded culture with open doors.
• They control strictly the expenses during good time as well as bad times. They keep their budgets tight even during booming times.
• They rather reinvest their profits in order to strengthen and to improve their business instead of distributing their revenues to the shareholders.
• They are constantly looking for ways to improve their business.
• One of these companies listens to its employees and maintains a “bright idea” program. They have got such bright suggestions by their employees that they could achieve annual improvements of millions of Dollars.
• They employ highly qualified, well trained employees. They develop the skills of their staff constantly. They take care that their employees are cross-trained in order to have them different jobs done. If skilled employees even are used temporarily to do simple jobs in order to fill gaps and do additional work during booming times they get paid for the salary of skilled employees.
• They anticipate the ups and downs of the conjuncture. If they feel that bad times are coming they stop replacing employees who leave the job voluntarily. They employ temporary staff as students or housewives during high times. They maintain a flexible salary policy. In slow years employees forego raises, in good times they get rewarded with mid year pay increases.
Such a comprehensive strategy could help to prevent layoffs of employees. It might be added that it is favourable if companies retain enough profits in order to accumulate sufficient reserves on equity for bad times. It would be a blessing if companies stopped layoffs of employees at all. Nine companies have proven that this demand to the responsible managers is not a dream. It can and should be done. More about
make money issues can be read at Make Money Tip.
Liliane Waldner
Bio Box:
Liliane Waldner is a business economist. She has attended the board of several public entities companies and pension funds, some of them dealing with the financial markets. Her website is:
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