Openness in Layoffs

Hi,

Indian companies are far from this openness shown by MNCs, In this case, Microsoft. I was stunned by the view suggested in the book “Good to Great” that if you think eliminating employees is the only option you have, do it as quickly as possible. The reason being is after the elimination, there is no doubt that the employees will weal around questioning “Why me?” but it will help both employees and the organization to sit and brain storm what next they can do.

This will be a driver for increased focus among individuals to choose right direction. At the same time, it will offer the organization to decide on their future. When Gates quoted what has happened to DEC in early 60s of this century in his book “Road Ahead”, I did not take notice of it, but on seeing Satyam and Sun saga I realize no one can say he is non-volatile.

Indian companies learned lot of things from MNCs. In the same way I wish they would add this item also in this list in future course of recession




Mail sent by Steve Ballmer.


Microsoft's layoff email to employees



Employees

Subject: Update: Realigning Resources and Reducing Costs

In January, in response to the global economic downturn, I announced our plan to adjust the company’s cost structure through spending reductions and job eliminations. Today, we are implementing the second phase of this plan.

This is difficult news to share. Because our success at Microsoft has always been the direct result of the talent, hard work, and commitment of our people, eliminating positions is hard.

Today’s action includes positions in the United States and in a number of countries around the world. In the US, affected employees will be notified directly by their managers today. In other countries, local leadership teams will provide more specific information about the impact to their organizations.

With this announcement, we are mostly but not all done with the planned 5,000 job eliminations by June 2010. We are moving quickly to reach this target in response to consistent feedback from our people and business groups that it’s important to make decisions and reduce uncertainty for employees as quickly as possible, and so that organizations can concentrate their efforts and resources on strategic objectives.

As we move forward, we will continue to closely monitor the impact of the economic downturn on the company and if necessary, take further actions on our cost structure including additional job eliminations.

For those of you directly affected by today’s announcement, I want to thank you for your contribution to Microsoft and assure you that we will continue to provide support as we did during the previous job eliminations.

And for everyone across the company, I want to reemphasize how much I appreciate the way you have pulled together to help the company respond to this difficult economic environment. There’s no doubt that these are very challenging times. But together, we are making the right choices to ensure that we will continue to deliver great products and position ourselves for strong future growth and profitability.

Thank you for your continued hard work, commitment, and focus.












Regards and thanks,
Muruganandan

--Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.