Having lived through a few rounds of “right-sizing” before being given my ticket out in 1994, I suspected this was going on, based on what we “survivers” (employees who kept their jobs) did, but these are some of the findings from a recent survey done by LeadershipIQ:

* 74% of of survivors say their own productivity has declined since the layoffs
* 69% say the quality of their company’s product or service has declined since the layoffs
* 64% say the productivity of their colleagues has declined
* 87% say they are less likely to recommend their organization as a good place to work

The reality is that most organizations may “down-size” the staff, but they don’t usually down-size the work. So fewer people are expected to scramble to take up the slack of the ones who have left and do their own jobs, too. Duh! It’s a wonder that any of these organizations survive after they’ve started this “death spiral.” Many don’t.

The statistics above are from a Leadership IQ study (link below), released on December 16, 2008. Below is a link to the press release which contains the above information and much more. They surveyed 4,172 employees in 318 companies that had had layoffs at some point in the 6 months prior to the survey. VERY interesting!

http://www.prwebdirect.com/releases/2008/12/prweb1754974.php

On that cheerful note…

Happy Holidays to all and Best Wishes for 2009!

Unfortunately, like history, we can only read the lessons when we are flat on our back. I’m on my back again! So my vision is very clear today.

When you look at the state of employment affairs, we can no longer afford the national strategy of “employment at will”. With the aging demographic, as a nation, we can’t “afford” the rampant age discrimination at work in the marketplace. Like the ERISA laws that ended the “aerospace engineers get fired after ten years for cheaper workers” and “pension vesting cheating”, we need some type of gooferment intervention to reframe the employment marketplace.

Also, the continued short term focus has destroyed the ethos that made America great. The psuedo-”liberal” political climate has led people down the path of “something for nothing thinking”, “personal gain at all costs”, and “bail outs galore from the public treasury”. We need to jail all the thieves and liars in politics and industry. That’ll really thin the herd. We need to shame them into good behavior.

So in 2009, we — the vast unwashed — need to take off the “rose color glasses” and see the world for what it has become — a tough place to earn a living as an employee.

Perhaps, the time of being an employee (i.e., the age of employee-ism) is over?

Personally, I don’t see becoming an employee again without an employment contract. You just can’t trust them like you used to. Further, it seems that one has to have one or more web-based value creation efforts. Maybe it’s just establishing whatever a personal brand is. Maybe it’s just selling your rambling thoughts. Maybe it’s a just a “failed effort” that you learn from (i.e., my attempt at “letters to my children” dot com). But one has to keep “testing”. Failure is good as long as it is cheap, fast, and “boxed”.

Happy Holy Days to all,
the big fat old turkey hisself

A few weeks ago, my husband and I sat down to dinner with five of our friends. We realized that the veteran among us had been with her current employer for… a year. And yet most of us had records of long, stable employment with a previous employer (three with small firms, one with WaMu, one with a college).

We’re spending this weekend with four different friends. Two have changed employment this year, one has had to take a pay deferral, and the fourth is at a big ruthless mover-and-shaker company where anything can always happen without notice.

Merry Christmas, one and all! Let’s keep on our toes. :-\