...to downsize or not..... some thoughts....

The talk of the town and moreso in the HR fraternity is if these times of recession and slowdown are the best of times to downsize, given the already battered morale of the workforce. The organisation, offcourse has a rationale - these are times, when business in uncertain, and the need to cut costs, and thus attempt to keep the bottomline in tact is the most crucial. 

But it is the responsibility of leadership, and the human resources function to play an advisory role to the contrary....  Irrespective of the scale and size of downsizing or rightsizing, it most hits the morale of even the most performing resource.....  Is the management vision so shortsighted that it is not confident of staying afloat in times of trouble, by better business means.... Pruning non human resource costs, focussing more at new customer acquistion, doing whatever it takes to keep the existing customers with the company, increasing productivity by scaling up delivery higher than that done in normal times.....  

The moment the people within the organisation think that management or leadership is over-reacting to a simple business cycle...  in a way that puts at stake some of his/her own colleagues careers, then, it is HR that will reel directly under the impact of 'loss of morale', 'rumor mongering', organisational uncertainty.....  At the sign of a better economic scenario in a matter of few months, the cost of brining in new talent will be dear......

Yes downsizing may be needed, and rightsizing probably needs to be taken up as a continuous process.... If people have to leave owing to bad performance, that should be managed even in good times..... complacency in that will only discourage the performing lot in the company.

Reactive downsizing, in a scale that is huge will cause immense harm to the Employer Brand........ Let HR head and recruitment professionals be wary and cautious of that......