Categories: Business & Finance

Downsizing for Survival (Part II)

Most businesses fail because they have too many employees. It is not just the excess salary it is the idle hands are a devil’s workshop.

Employees with nothing to do tend to get into confrontation with other employees, waste material, utilities, and often, unwork.  (This is a topic which deserves it’s own article).

To know which of your employees you should get rid of, these simple tests can be run.

Phone Tests and Other Tips

A large company needed to get rid of 1/3rd of its work force to survive.

What was done seems ridiculous, but ten years later has proven its merit.

The Trouble Shooters visited all four stories of the business before lunch.  With a seating plan, identified each employee.

They watched their phone behavior.

They discounted business calls, they focused on personal calls; whether via land land or cell. All those on personal calls were ticked.

They returned to each floor in the afternoon and did the same thing.

Where there were two ticks, that employee was discharged.

Simply put, people who can’t differentiate between work and not work don’t need to work here. People who have long conversations on the phone which are not business related don’t need to work here.

 

Related Post

FILE TRACKING

This  is another test. One file jacket of a different colour is placed on each desk.

The time for that file to move to the ‘Out’ tray is measured. (The number of files and their complexity are weighed).

When the Coloured File sits in the ‘In’ box for X amount of time, and the work in the Outbox does not substantially increase, that employee is ‘unworking’ and can be let go.

Where an employee seems to get through ten files in an hour, (and those files are checked to insure that work was accomplished) that worker stays.

These two simple tests can be accomplished easily by a business owner or manager.

Simple put, when a company knows that it needs to downsize it has to insure it only gets rid of people that it doesn’t need.

Whether a person is properly dressed or not, arrives on time or not, has worked for the company for ten years or not, does not matter.

What matters is The Work.

The person who has no problem running their private life on the company’s phone can do that from home.

The person who works so slowly that anything on that desk goes into limbo can leave.

What you need are people who understand that they have sold about 8 hours of their time to the business, and conduct the business during those 8 hours.

Many, who are under worked, will slack off.  And this is the fault of the owner, not the worker.

 




  • kaylar

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    • When companies do well there is wastage all over and not just with an over load of employees. I have worked for a multi national and I know how wasteful things were around until a new MD came along and the first thing he did was to reduce the size of our cabins - in fact we were provided with open cubicles (lol)

      • Usually the problem isn't the office size (the cabin) it is that people are paid and do virtually nothing. And when there's a problem... to get rid of the right people... not just these ten or those who were recently hired, but to make the right choices, these little tips work.

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