“I’d much rather do business with an organization that takes great care of their people, and I certainly wouldn’t want to work for a company that shows through their actions that they don’t actually care about me and my colleagues.” – Scott Ingram in today’s Tip 1548
What’s your thought about this?
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Transcript
Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today’s tip is totally a rant, because I’m sick and tired of the layoffs and I think most of them are illegitimate and just demonstrate really poor leadership.
Before we can talk about these illegitimate layoffs I probably need to define a legitimate layoff.
If layoffs are necessary for the long-term viability of a company and without them, it’s possible that everyone would lose their job, that’s legitimate. Similarly, if a particular division or product offering has failed and isn’t sustainable, then letting that team go after giving them an opportunity to find other opportunities in the organization is also legitimate, but in my book, that’s about it. If you’re putting profit over people and letting people go, you’re in the wrong.
If you’re profitable or sitting on enough cash to fund the business for the next couple of years, why on earth are you letting people go? Sure, maybe you made a forecasting mistake in the past and overhired, but as a leader, you need to own that and figure out how to make productive use of the talent you’ve invested in.
To make matters worse, most of these layoffs seem to be crazy arbitrary in determining who gets cut. There’s no recognition of prior contributions or the critical institutional knowledge people posses. Years and even decades of loyalty don’t seem to matter.
It’s one thing to have clear performance criteria and expectations that lead to the termination of under-performers who’ve been given the time and opportunity to turn things around, but to just fire people to improve your margins just isn’t right. What’s crazy is I’ve seen this from companies that just a couple of years ago have said that their people are their most important asset.
If you put profit over people and lay people off illegitimately, then you can never say things like that again. How you treat your people ultimately trickles down to your customers and their experience.
Which type of organization do you think is going to perform best in the long term? The one that shows loyalty to their people, that invests in them, and helps them develop and grow, or the company who’s employees live in fear that they might be next?
I think we all need to look at this and consider where we’re working and who we’re doing business with.
I don’t know about you, but I’d much rather do business with an organization that takes great care of their people, and I certainly wouldn’t want to work for a company that shows through their actions that they don’t actually care about me and my colleagues.
With that, I’ll step down off of my soapbox, but if you enjoy an occasional rant, make sure you’re subscribed to the podcast, and be sure to come back tomorrow for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!