Opportunity
Shaper, helping others turn good ideas into real
opportunities.
Let's
Talk about the Human Cost of Hiring/Firing
To
some, it seems like the odds are stacked heavily against employees. In good
times, companies expect them to put in extra effort to accelerate growth. In bad
times, companies are quick to terminate "unnecessary" workers. Too often, the
human cost – a family's loss of food, shelter and education – is largely
ignored.
On
September 3rd, at 1pm ET/10am PT Linkedin is sponsoring a *live* webinar to
discuss the realities of modern hiring. (Sign
up here to get reminders and attend.) CAREEREALISM founder and
CEO, JT
O'Donnell, will be moderating the event and I'll be participating
along with headhunter and author, Lou
Adler.
If
you can't make the live event, please sign up anyway and save the link; it will
allow you to watch later, at your convenience.
This
Slideshare (see attached) was part of my original article on the subject, which
motivated JT and LinkedIn to organize this live event. In it, I confronted the
shocking practice – to me – of companies announcing record profits as they
simultaneously terminated employees.
I
know there are no easy answers. Companies operate in a free market system, one
that has been drifting for years towards short-term results. No single firm
controls this system, nor has the power to change it
overnight.
My
fear, however, is that this continuing shift towards short-term results, left
unchecked, will result in a system that is so far out of balance that it topples
over. We are coming up on the fifth anniversary of the collapse of
US investment bank Lehman Brothers, and some days I feel like we haven't learned
anything from the experience.
One
word: loyalty
It
really all comes down to loyalty, and whether or not anyone thinks we should
continue to value it. Should employees, companies and investors be loyal to
those who earn their loyalty, or is loyalty a hopelessly outdated
concept?
If
loyalty disappears, we all will be living in an increasingly unpredictable and
volatile world. It will be early impossible for anyone to plan for the future,
and all of us will suffer.
You,
of course, may disagree. Lou and JT may disagree. We'll find out next Tuesday,
and I hope that we all gain some insights from the event.
What
Do YOU Want Us To Discuss?
When
you sign up, please suggest questions that we can discuss in this live session.
For example...
·
Under
what circumstances does a company owe loyalty to its
employees?
·
If a
company shows loyalty to employees, what sort of loyalty should employees offer
the company in return?
·
Do you
have any ideas for creating win/win relationships between companies and
employees?
I
hope you can join us on Tuesday.
UPDATE
(11:30 a.m. ET): To
help me prepare for next Tuesday, Adam
Grant just sent me a very interesting piece of research by Wayne
Cascio, Strategies
for Responsible Restructuring. Here's a quick excerpt that really
caught my eye:
One
group of firms, by far the larger of the two, saw employees as costs to be cut.
The other, much smaller group of firms, saw employees as assets to be
developed... The downsizers see employees as commodities - like paper clips or
light bulbs, interchangeable and substitutable for each other... in contrast,
responsible restructurers see employees as sources of innovation and renewal.
They see in employees the potential to grow their
business."
_____________________________________________________
Bruce
Kasanoff (@NowPossible on
Twitter) is author of the free online career guide, Simplify Your
Future. Click the "follow" button below to see more of Bruce's
articles on LinkedIn.
Image
credit: Shutterstock
