What the Business Community Sometimes Doesn’t Get

Large organizations fire and hire based on bean counter assumptions.  Firing employees creates more money for the corporation, increasing short-term profits and the pockets of the CEOs.  

The challenge with the meat cleaver approach is the costs are not included.  When a manager at a social media firm is told to rank a certain percentage of staff as underperforming, is this really a true evaluation?  What if almost all employees on the team are excellent performers?  And if they are not, whose fault is that?  

As someone who has been involved in employment matters from the U.S. House of Representatives, federal agencies, international organizations, and foreign corporations, I can say that often if an employee is a poor performer, it is because management has done a poor job in communicating expectations, training, and grooming workers’ individual talents.  

When a corporation drastically cuts staff to follow the crowd which occurred late last year continuing to recently, there is a loss of staff with institutional knowledge.  There is also demoralization of those who remain.  A cohesive, well-turned team is broken up.  Such upheaval even for remaining staff is often unsettling.  Sometimes it leads to the remaining employees to look elsewhere for opportunities and adversely impacting performance.  Indeed, why be loyal to an organization that is not loyal to you?  

When companies focus on benefits and stability, According to Care.com, when employees feel supported, there is a 425% ROI!   https://www.care.com/business/about/. 

Why not look at retraining.  Why not focus on attrition.  What is the long-term plan of the business?  Can those employees be rededicated to that future vision?  

The challenge in America today is that corporate officers are often driven by politics and short-term, quarterly profits, as opposed to long-term planning.  We wish analysts and corporate reports focused more on long-term plans, not the ups and downs of quarterly performance.  

And lastly, when a corporation fires an otherwise good performer, that affects that person’s family, ability to pay a mortgage, the economic viability of the local community.  

it is interesting that in 2019, the Business Roundtable stated that the purpose of a corporation should be to benefit not just the shareholders but also its workers and the community.  Has that happened?