Hiring strategies while Downsizing

No business ever enjoys making a downsizing decision. How an organization handle layoffs and retained staff will have a significant impact on the end results. Human resources play a critical role in addressing any problems that may develop after it has reduced its workforce through layoffs.?

This leads to an important question: How can human resources facilitate upholding a positive corporate image while ensuring that the downsizing is stress-free and feasible for employees? Ms. Neha Sahi , Senior Director of Human Resources at Trell , addressed this issue in the recent episode of the #HumansOfHiring series.

Ms. Sahi is an industry veteran holding experience working with some well-known companies like Zest Money, Avail Finance, and Trell. Her take on hiring strategies while downsizing provides a comprehensive overview and roadmap of what can be done to make this process efficient.

Here are some of the highlights from the webinar.

1. Do Hiring Strategies need to be tweaked when downsizing occurs in an organization?

There are definitely a lot of changes required with a company’s hiring strategies when they are downsizing. Most people wouldn’t understand the psyche behind a company trying to hire while downsizing and there is a lot of criticism that they receive for the same.

Downsizing is not comfortable for anybody be it employees, human resources professionals, or founders. Human resources have to manage employees experiencing downsizing while also keeping up the motivation levels of potential hires joining the company during such times. So the company’s sellability, USPs, and approach toward existing employees have to change. The conversation with potential employees and the messaging would also have to change. So there are a lot of things that we need to manage while ensuring that nobody feels dissuaded or disappointed in this entire process. So, yes, strategies change, policies change, approaches change, plans change.?

2. What would be an efficient strategy to ensure new talent joins a company that is downsizing?

Companies only hire for critical roles when downsizing and hence will be attracting talent for specific departments that wouldn’t be impacted by the downsizing. Generally, these are the teams that are generating revenue, keeping the company afloat, and have the potential to help the company bounce back in the future.

When there is news about the company being downsized going around, the messaging as to why the company is hiring for a particular role has to be more precise and clear. The sellability for each role in such circumstances differs vividly. Candidates have too much uncertainty associated with the company and are not sure whether it's the best bet for them. So, it would essentially take more conversations to convince new talent to join the company.

One way to ensure that these candidates join the company is by letting them interact with the retained employees of the company. Also, the charms and experience of human resources come into play and have the potential to act like the cherry on top to ensure good talent joins the company even in such circumstances.

3. Ideally, how can human resources professionals ensure that the retained employees feel safe?

It's difficult to keep all the employees of the company happy, motivated, and engaged in such situations as there might be strict budgetary constraints. But, there is always hope and keeping employees well-informed and having constant communication with them is a good way to make employees feel their presence matters in the organization. human resource professionals and company management also have to keep a tab on employees’ professional well-being. Keeping employees motivated, and giving them faith is vital for them to trust the process and the company. Hence, having constant clear communication between employees, human resource professionals and management is critical to make employees feel safe without which the chances of them moving on are higher.

4. In what ways can human resources professionals ensure a balanced redistribution of responsibilities among the employees?

Distribution of work will compound on every employee as a direct effect of downsizing. But, in most companies, the number of projects and tasks is comparatively lower during downsizing. The brands that are in panels with the company are lesser but the collaboration and coordination are more. Human resources and the management should make an effort to understand the amount of pressure on individual employees and provide them with all the support they need. One way to ease the workload would be to hire interns as it would be cost-effective and they could prove to be efficient if trained well.

Speaker - Neha Sahi , Senior HR Director at Trell