The number one redundancy mistake organisations make.

The number one redundancy mistake organisations make.

 

The number one mistake organisations make when undertaking redundancies processes is going too fast.

Speed introduces the risk that either the people or processes are not fully prepared. By people I mean the managers that have to actually make the announcements. Processes refer to the backend calculations of payout entitlements, legal checking etc. There is nothing more unprofessional than redundancy letters that have the wrong amount on it. Worse still is the message this sends to departing staff: “you care about me so little you couldn’t even get a simple figure right”. Now that’s a strong statement, but we’ve heard it more than once.

Here are the two reasons why organisations fail to get the pace of redundancies right.

#1: Human Nature. It is natural for people to get unpleasant things over and done with as quickly as possible. As a manager, telling someone they don’t have a job is the most unpleasant part of managing. I heard recently that a decision to layoff staff was made by the Executive of an organisation on the Friday, communicated to the HR Manager on the Monday to begin two days later on the Wednesday. The key learning from this process was that the managers at the coalface did not have sufficient time to prepare. It was too fast.

#2 Artificial Deadline. 30^th June. End of financial year is the typical artificially created deadline to have redundancy processes finished and staff off the books. We see it every June – companies moving fast to meet this date when they simply did not start early enough or the decision was made in June, not April or May.

There is an ideal pace for redundancy. Starting from the planning stage through to post implementation requires thoughtful planning and consideration of the impact of decisions on all those involved.

Pace Matters.

Clickhere for our tip sheet for Managers and for HR Managers

 

Don't hesitate to contact us if you have any questions regarding the Announcement Process, we are happy to talk you through it.