Answer to Question #198393 in Management for Nand Patel

Question

suppose that you are the HR manager at a firm where hiring-freeze has been declared due to the ongoing pandemic. The plan is to downsize through attrition. What steps would you take to ensure that you reap the advantages of the strategy while minimizing the disadvantages.

Answer 1

The ongoing pandemic, has led to the underperformance of many firms which has significantly led to excessive operational expenses. Therefore,the firms have considered downsizing by attrition by the use of an approach known as Corporate downsizing to increase the efficiency of the firm. Corporate downsizing refers to the decrease in the size of team members of a given firm and the operational costs. Thus, increasing the firm's productivity, competition with other firms and lastly increase in the firm's performance. However, this will result to the firm function with fewer team members to complete the same tasks before the application of the corporate downsizing approach.

As the Human Resourse manager, I will use the corporate downsizing approach to eliminate redundant positions in the firm. Therefore reducing the workforce by reducing the number of the team members. This entails the removal of unnecessary task or roles and responsibilities of a given position within the firm. Therefore the vacant roles and responsibilities of the removed redundant positions is passed on to the remaining team members postions, merging of the existing divisions and reducing the working hours. The removal of redundant position must be professionally done by consulting the team members to avoid claims of unfair employee's contract termination.

The corporate downsizing approach enables the manager to make improvements to the organization's system. Cultural changes implementation also has the beneficial effect of increasing efficiency by motivating the workers. Therefore, this will result to long-term outcomes. The emphasis will be on the customer’s service that leads to profitability. This approach will be effective during the major crisis and financial difficulty caused by the pandemic. During layoffs, I will value employees' integrity, get things done efficiently, and address all legal issues. The strategy would save the business, increase accountability, keep employees, and improve relationships.