Chip Cutter

speaker

1,085 appearances 18 recordings 1 series first heard Aug 2019 last heard Sep 2024

Chip Cutter’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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WSJ Your Money Briefing · How Companies Decide Which Employees Will Be Laid Off · 29 Mar 2023 podcast

In addition to reviewing an employee's performance history, many companies also consider workers' potential to adapt and take on new jobs in the future. voice-verified

One CEO told me it's really down to a one-on-one assessment of performance in determining who you're going to keep. voice-verified

Well, today it's much more common for companies to conduct layoffs based on skills rather than tenure. voice-verified

So an employee's recent performance will factor into this a lot more than someone's length of time at a company. voice-verified

Employees with high salaries also might face greater attention, though corporate advisors say those workers might also be among a company's top performers. voice-verified

So maybe it doesn't make sense to cut them. voice-verified

Many think it is the job of HR to select the individual employees to terminate, though it's often far more likely that the business leaders in each area of a company that suggest names of employees to target. voice-verified

So it's not HR doing this work. voice-verified

It's oftentimes the divisional heads, the department heads selecting the individual names. voice-verified

And once individual employees are identified, HR then gets to work in scrubbing the list, looking to see if a company is, for example, disproportionately laying off people over the age of 40 or unfairly targeting minorities or veterans or other groups. voice-verified

Any kind of discrimination like this could open an employer to a lawsuit. voice-verified

And so companies also sometimes rely on outside help in this, too. voice-verified

They might buy tools or software or engage lawyers to sift through a layoff list to look for any possible red flags. voice-verified

Well, debates are frequent. voice-verified

Everyone I talked to for this said there's oftentimes a lot of back and forth, a lot of revision. voice-verified

Some managers might attempt to jockey for certain employees to remain. voice-verified

And disputes can emerge between leaders about the philosophy of a layoff, say whether to cut a layer of middle management or to fire more executives over frontline employees. voice-verified

And even when companies decide to shut down entire business units, executives might make the decision to keep some high-achieving employees and move them elsewhere. voice-verified

So lots of room for debate. voice-verified

This was an interesting example. voice-verified

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