Layoffs have become necessity to protect jobs of incompetent executives and Managers who have filled their pockets - and continue to do so at the expense of the working hands - they hold the system and the company to ransom - they are the last ones to go after sacking many of the skilled people, since they invent ways to justify their existence. Hope the CEO understand the predicament of having these long time whales in the company running the show
1 reply
(With ref to HPES)
Many managers, particularly middle managers have no idea of how to increase effectiveness or efficiency in their respective areas, because they don't actually understand the work they are managing. So when they are challenged to make savings they get out their go-to big book of management techniques and turn to its only page. The one that reads "redundancies".
Like offshoring, because everyone is doing it (incompetence being widespread in large companies from the middle to the top - the idiots having taken over the asylum) no-one is going to get fired doing what everyone else in the industry is doing already. Taking another route from laying off people takes thought, planning, some iota of skill and of course risk because you are now treading a less worn path with no defence of "just doing what l'm told" or "everyone else is doing it"..
I know for a fact that this occurs in HPES. When our area talks about leveraging work to increase productivity and decrease cost per account we get back a does not compute. In fact even when we propose any increase in manning to reach a better overall saving e.g. a dead easy example is replacing contractors with permanent staff to save actual millions we get back an "absolutely not".
We have been told to turn away new paying business that the client(s) wanted us to do, that couldn't be done elsewhere in the region at all (no existing capability outside our area) simply because we didn't fit the RDC plan.
HP would rather lose business in this way, or place work in locations with no capability where it then fails horribly, than place it where the skills and processes exist. HP then complains that its not signing up enough new business/increasing existing business, and there is a problem with account run off.
There was at some point a high level plan that the RDC strategy was the answer to HP ES's declining profit. This became gospel - no other solutions or strategies would be discussed or allowed any oxygen to challenge this focus. HP are spending more money overall to implement RDC and increasing service risk than if they did nothing, thus contradicting the point of RDC in the first place. HP then come out with another profit warning and go back to that big book with only one page in it...
Middle management yes men don't seem able to go back and say there is a better way to meet these cost savings, because that would mean sticking your neck out from the RDC tent and there is no incentive to risk their careers in this way. Everyone is onboard this shit-shack as it hurtles towards its doom. Choo Choo!
It is literal insanity and tortuous to remaining staff who see these opportunities missed by crass, stubborn and myopic mismanagement.