Job lay offs is a common practice

I am an HR professional and this has always been one concerning matter. Job lay off has become such a common thing with almost every company and what I see it is majorly done with multinationals. I subscribe to HR news, and almost every day I read about one company who is on a lay off exercise. Yesterday's e-mail I received, from the 6 top headlines, 3 were about layoffs, and they are with all big companies. When I was working with one of the top tech companies, this was a common practice with them. Every year there was a 10% to 15% target of laying off, which would include the bottom 10% performers of the Company. The whole point was that we had a bell curve assessment so someone has to be in the bottom of the curve.

I was reading through and most of these lay-off reasons are about simplifying processes and making companies more efficient and profitable. As an HR it is very difficult to deal with these situations. The top management makes decisions but the actions have to be taken down the line by the HR personnel who are actually facing the employee. It was the worst job, because people will cry and beg not to terminate them and as an HR you are just so helpless you cannot do anything about it.

Recently in my hubby's company they carried out a Transformation initiative in which they laid off almost 2000 employees. He being a expat, we were not sure about his job also, because in such initiatives, expats can become easy scapegoats. But his role is important and he has certain expertise in his job which saved him through this. But I know many friends who had to go and it was sad, because on one day you are having this very good paying job and the next day it's gone. There will be so much of uncertainty. It's not even easy to get a new job unless you have some specific expertise. One of my friend's brother was laid off from his company and for 2 years he could not get a job. Finally, he started some catering thing from home, but that was not enough to meet the family expenses. It was extremely tough for him and he was in depression. He would beg to people to help him find some job.

Companies are working towards more compact teams but then what about the people, where do they go and find jobs especially where almost every company is going in to restructuring and downsizing their workforce. With technology and automation this is going to become one burning issue in the near future.

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