Why people reject downsizing
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This is a pretty simple concept, but let’s lay it out. Sometimes, during a restructure, we hope to bring people with us, hope they agree with what we are trying to do, but they say ‘nope’.
Listen here for more on why people aren’t organisation devotees.
What about them over there?
You’re doing this right now in your organisation, I know you are. You know of a person, team, or department, who are quietly ‘getting away with it’; not doing much, being offer-staffed, under-utilised, easy targets, something like this. If I asked you now, you could tell me of at least one person who has it pretty easy right now. So when things get tight, the expectation most people have is that these people should go first.
Read here for how to break the bad news of downsizing.
Whether the situation necessitates the organisation downsizing and making people redundant, the knives come out. Most people have opinions about the performance of others, and when things are going well, it’s ‘live and let live’. But when it comes to the prospect that they might stay while you go, it becomes quite ‘live and let die’, as people feel aggrieved at the prospect that they might be let go while less valuable people are retained.
Read here for how HR can accidental contribute to this by hoarding talent.
Unfortunately this is complicated by incomplete data. Everyone has an opinion, but not everyone has the full data. Most likely employee’s opinion of their suitability compares to other suitability is not based on all the information, although it is possible management also has it wrong, and not all the information.
The unfortunate reality is that sometimes employee don’t accept the fairness of their (or others) redundancy because other less deserving stayed.
Read here for more on how this deadwood comes about.
There were/are better solutions, why didn’t you do those?
This is a particularly tough argument to contend with. In New Zealand we are required to consult, and sometimes we have employees come to the table with one (many or all) of the following ideas; problems that have led to this situation, new ideas that should have been implemented that would have avoided the situation, and/or new ideas that they could do to avoid their redundancy.
Read here for more on how to help people process downsizing.
Sometimes these critiques and ideas quite fair, and quite correct. But most of the time they are too little, too late. Organisations typically exhaust all options before complating redundancies, so most of the time ‘the ship has sailed’ for these operational fixes. Alternatively, employee problem identification is with the benefit of hindsight- pointing out errors is easy to do after the fact.
The final observation I have found myself making is the employee who comes up with many great ideas for how they could be more productive and beneficial, so should be retained. This does beg the question (especially if it was easily within their remit to make these changes) why haven’t they done these already?
This is a sham, it’s about performance/me/my boss
There is a tendency for organisations to deal with poor performance through downsizing. I’m not excusing this, but the reality is that some (not all, and not even that many) redundancies are in fact simply performance masquerading as redundancy. Some are genuine redundancies of otherwise well-performing employees, and some fall somewhere in between; it often gets a bit grey in this area, because company try their best to keep their best people; meaning those that go were not their best. Many employees know this, and some will ‘call out’ the company for doing this, sometimes correctly, sometimes incorrectly.
Listen here for why managers go to tools they understand.
Tenure should be rewarded
Loyalty, and how much it should be rewarded, is a tricky question. Organisations implicitly demand loyalty, dedication and over-and-above hours and commitment to get the job done. Does this result in a psychological ‘cash in the bank’ or expectations that such dedicated employees will be looked after when times are tough? Many people would say yes to this, and I wouldn’t disagree, but neither can I say how much it ‘counts’. In reality, long term employees (and others observing) have an expectation that loyalty should equal some form of protection, and the redundancy of long serving employees can be perceived as unjust.
Read here for more on how HR drive for loyalty can be disengaging.
Can you control this bad press?
No, and don’t try. All of the above are some of the reasons why employees (both those going and those staying) may find fault in the organisation’s decisions to downsize, and who to remove. They may say thing to you directly, but mostly like they will say this to each other. This is part of the grieving process, and the temptation to stifle and control this dialogue is likely only to exacerbate their grief and result in distrust. My recommendation is to let the grieving process happen, let people speak their truth as they see it, and focus on rebuilding after it’s happened. Reputably, the wisest piece of wisdom is ‘this too shall pass’.
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Read here for more on slowing turnover.
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