Exits: Rightsizing through redundancy
Or alternatively cutting the deadwood. To put it more politely, you’re downsizing. To be more polite, you’re rightsizing.
Right-sizing
This term can be a bit of a wanky corporate word, but don’t completely kick it to touch. It’s a useful term to use here.
Think of a tradie van set up, ready for a day on the road. At the beginning of the day, it needs to have all the gear, tools, parts and sundry to do the job, that WILL happen that day. They need to know as they hit the road in the morning that they are set up right for what is ABOUT to happen.
Organisations need to do the same; they need to have the right set up for what is about to happen. The timeframes are longer, but the situation is roughly the same. It needs to have right number of people (not too many, not too few), in the right place, with the needed skills to do the work that will happen in the future- whether it’s now, next week, next month, next quarter or next year.
This is rightsizing- the organization needs to be the right size for the amount of work coming up. To some extent, it is also about the skills needed for the future (e.g. you wouldn’t want to have been a draughtsman in the 1990s when things went digital), but that’s a different flavour of the same story.
Downsizing= a subset of right-sizing
One form of rightsizing is hiring more people (we’ve landed a big contract, so we need 4 more people), and the other is reducing the people. If you currently have X number of people, but the future doesn’t look like you will need that many people, then you need to reduce headcount, you need to downsize.
If the future is looking brighter, you’re hiring. If it’s looking dimmer, you’re making people redundant.
Downsizing = cutting the deadwood
Deadwood a pretty harsh way of putting it, and in many ways we can’t pretend that it’s not. No one likes being thought of as deadwood (feels like ‘dead man walking’ to me). But the key point is this: it’s the position that is deadwood, not the person. The person is not to blame, they are just unlucky to be sitting in the chair that needs to be removed.
But cutting deadwood is a good metaphor; deadwood not only is no longer serving a purpose, but it slowly down and potentially endangering the tree. A tree with too much deadwood may die or topple, so better to cut it to keep it healthy.
A grand game of musical chairs
To thrash a metaphor, work can be like a game of musical chairs, where the chairs are positions, and the people are, well, people. Sometimes we are adding chairs, sometimes we are taking them away. Why is this important? Because it’s not their fault. The business unfortunately needs less chairs for the upcoming future.
It’s a crystal ball situation
Predicting the future can go either way- the business can do a) a good job of looking at the future, and see all the signs of what the future will bring, or b) it can miss them, misunderstand them or just not think about it. If it’s a) then we are acting before the trouble hits the air conditioning, or if it’s b) we are reacting in the moment, and probably doing a rush job.
But either way, whether it’s with enough time or not quite enough, we never really know what the future will hold, so we are giving it our best estimate. So don’t feel bad that you’re not certain- better to act with your best, sincere, estimate, than to just put your head in the sand.
It’s (mostly) no one’s fault
It’s not the business’ failing (well not entirely) that the situation looks like they will have too many people in the future if things aren’t changed. No one recklessly and thoughtless hires more people; no one goes to the trouble of recruiting, hiring, onboarding, and training more people, just to have to let them go. No recruitment process is less work that not hiring people in the first place, not matter how much you half-arse it.
If there is a fault by the employer, it’s because they either:
- Were over-optimistic about the future,
- Ignored the warning signs of bad times ahead and didn’t cut back other expenses,
- Messed up and lost a contact, or some other unexpected business disruption.
In short, no one wants this, but it is the best estimate of what we need to do now, for the future.
So what does this mean?
If you’re the employer making people redundant- it’s unpleasant, it’s awful, it may be a bit your fault (well all could have done things better in hindsight, hindsight is 20/20), but sometimes it’s what needs to happen. It’s unpleasant, but it can be necessary.
If you’re the employee being made redundant, it’s much more unpleasant, awful, threatening to the welfare of you and those who depend upon you, and not at all your fault. It’s your job to turn up to do the work, and the employer’s job to find that work for you. But sometimes this doesn’t work out.
