Apart from empathyzing After LayOff Life and Tensions associated with it, lets talk about the process...
When I heard a veteran saying "I'll lay-off myself before I can lay-off my employees, as I am responsible for the prevailing situation" I was obviously happy as an employee. But what will happen if an employer could never take a bold step to prune-off the lazy under performers? Wont it question the quality of the organization? Wont it shake the very base of an organization? Wont it ultimately lead to a check-mate situation described earlier by the veteran? Thus, it is imperative that every organization will wither-away the sludge, immaterial of recession! It will only make the organization more healthier than ever!
Thus said, the organization has been doing it for long and will continue to do it and there will be no question asked by all relevant stake holders in the front row(No not the company stock holders, but we, general public, media, employees). But if you take a closer look, there is a pattern to this natural low-performing-employee-pruning process. No organization wakes up to this fact on one particular day. Every now and then individuals in the organization takes this decision to keep thier division of the house clean!
But when there is an org-wide drive with a number in its mind, eventhough the organizatino targets the low performers and state that as a reason, the number in thier mind does not justify any healthy reason an organization can give to prune off the employees! An organization justify this because, on a particular day it cannot wake up to this fact that today, I want to clean my house all in a sudden and say 1% of the employees who are low performers should go home! Employees who are low performers are anyway going to go home in the as and when process! The organization has no say to it! Can the Org say no to a manager who says he wants to sack a person who is not performing well???
Now when the organization comes up with the drive, with a number in thier mind, they will obviously target low performers and remember even if there is an organization has two persons in thier employee roll, one person can be termed as low performer! After all low performance is a relative word! Its not an absolute measure!
So whats the problem be-it layoff or performance based sacking, the result is same right? No! A Big No! When an employee get slayed because of Lay-Off, (s)he get a better face to look at the future than when (s)he get slayed down from back in the name of low-performance.
Lets have a closer look. A top technocrat, shifts from one project to the other, the bosses are too busy to notice that this guy is without any work or the need for the person suddenly vanished and is not foreseen to come back! Within months, they are asked questions on the idle resource and they come to an eventual decision. Conduct a performance evaluation test and chuck him off!
In layman terms this is nothing but LayOff, ofcourse in a very miniscule scale!
When the same situation arises for the organization, they lay off in thousands!
A friend of mine gave this example(Must be from a famous book that he was reading):
The maximum speed the car first introduced in Britain Roads could reach around 20 miles and today, with all advancements the maximum speed a car is allowed to go in the same britain streets is less than 20!!!
So we have enormous growth in terms of Technology in paper, but we seriously lack a model that can promise sustainable growth!
Its like somehow I figured how to grow 1 crore bananas in one minute! But what do I do with the end-result is something I dont care! I'll generate bananas, sell them for cheap, earn money, live happily! Afterall my sindanda will go like "A Banana A Day, Even for a Somalian Stray!!!", "Revolutionary Scientist puts an end of hunger in the world" and so on. But can we live with just bananas??? And even if we could, how about storing the outcome, how about transportation to somalia in tons and tons almost every minute?
A Sustainable Business Model is sometimes felt as a Myth. The world itself is unstable. What can we say any more about greedy goose's business models?
Let us stop thinking for a minute. Let us pray God(And By Praying God, we make statements that we want to hear and believe that it would come true some day) that we should get enough strength and will to move towards sustainable business models. Not the one the capitalist has, not the one the communist proposes, not the one that exists anywhere in this world, but of a heavenly one!
A perfect model that promises longevity of growth. I wouldn't mind even if its slow. But let that be stabel and sustainable for a longer period!
Its time to think on Non-perishable Thoughtlets!!! Which should bear the fruit: Non-perishable Business Models!!!
Jai ho!
