• Chris Young at Maximize Possibility, who asks who whether employee layoffs or paycuts are preferable.
• Lucie Phillips at People Management’s Editors blog who deals with the particular issues around part-time workers.
• Shauna Moerke the HR Minion who shares her experience ofoutplacement support.

• Sharlyn Lauby at HR Bartender asks what Is the new HR? 
• Chris Ferdinandi believes Renegade HR is an art (but you should act like a scientist)
• so of course you need to understand when to use qualitative vs quantitative research – see the advice from Tess Walton at Strategic Workforce Planning.”

Jon’s assembled some great bloggers and posts, so be sure to check it out!  This should keep your HR brain working while we return to our own original content over the next several days.  Thanks for your patience and let’s keep the conversation going.

#1 – Poor Performance

You may not agree with performance reviews and perhaps have fallen victim to an unfair 360 or subjective bias. Be that at is may, most organizations begin their RIF process by eliminating their poorest performers. This typically equates to anywhere between 3-5% of the workforce and is easily justified by the powers that be.

So, if you have historically fallen in the “below expectations” quadrant and have not improved, pack up your things and start hunting for a job now. If you have improved, ask for an interim review and ensure your manager informs HR (or better yet, inform them yourself) that you are a newly minted rising performer.

#2 – A Bad Business Unit

This one is not necessarily something you can control, but if your product/service/offering is severely underperforming relative to the rest of the business, you’ll likely be shut down. Companies are rapidly shedding underperforming assets while trying to pour precious capital into those business units which have the highest likelihood of profitability and sustainability.

If you have ever had an innovative idea that can help turn the Titanic, now is the time to pipe up. For many of you, the ship may have already hit the iceberg, so remain aware of how your unit is performing and pay attention to what’s happening to your competitors and your industry in general. Have a plan and be prepared to jump ship before you’re tossed overboard.

#3 – “Part of the Problem”

I know it’s consultant speak and I hate the cliche, but management is subjectively assessing whether certain employees are either “part of the problem” or “part of the solution”. How do you know if you’re a member of the former? Well, do you complain at every turn? Do you overtly blame others for all failings? Have you had any major screw-ups in the past few months? Have you pissed off any key executives? I’m not suggesting that these are the right criteria, I’m simply stating that these are the tell-tale signs for stereotyping so-called problem employees.

Lance Haun of YourHRGuy.com wrote a great post the other day entitled, Make Yourself Part Of The Solution. Although Lance spoke to how HR needs to specifically be engaged in these troubled times, I believe his advice rings true for all employees:

• Invite yourself to meetings (be engaged);
• Do things without being asked (be proactive);
• Know your employees (and know yourself); and
• Be assertive (don’t be a wallflower)!

Which brings us to number four….

#4 – Do Nothing

You really want to ensure you get fired? Well, the best advice I can give is to do absolutely nothing. Just come into work every day, do your most basic job (perhaps the same job you’ve done for the past few years), stay underground and off the gird, and don’t be surprised when the hammer falls. If you go completely unnoticed and simply toe the line, you will be eventually unearthed and most likely will be fired.

The reason for this is that you’ve basically made yourself a commodity and in doing so notified management that you are not engaged in the problems of the day. I’m not suggesting you run up and down the hallways to make yourself uncomfortably visible. What I am suggesting is that you need to follow Lance’s advice and start participating actively in your career.

In Closing…

Listen, times are pretty God-awful for people and I’m not suggesting that following these tips will protect you from an inevitable layoff. Each employee is part of a larger ecosystem, and sometimes the system simply fails despite your best efforts. What I am saying is that you need to remain self-aware of how you might be viewed by those who can whimsically erase you from the org chart. Take control of as much of your career and professional sustainability as possible. And when in doubt, be sure to get several back-up plans in motion.

Best of luck to each of you in these trying times and let’s keep the conversation going.

Last December I was bold enough to gaze into my foggy crystal ball and prognosticate on the future of our HR industry.  Well it’s time to assess my performance and take my lumps where appropriate.  I don’t consider myself dim, but this bulb did not shine as brightly as I would have hoped.

I called 2008 “A Year of Shifting Priorities” and presented four predictions for the coming year, including:

1. The Beginning of the Employee Power Shift: Can you believe I said, “I see 2008 as the year of a pendulum swing back in favor of the employee”?  Really.  I said that??  Wow.  This was a giant swing-and-a-miss for me.  Not only did employees take a swift kick in the rear across 2008, but I’ve personally witnessed employers recklessly wielding the big stick to wipe out thousands upon thousands of FTEs.  Who would have thought the market would be relieved by jobless claims “easing” to 554,000 from 575,000 the week prior?  Sorry employees, the power is definitely not in your hands.  Inflexion Point Grade – F
2. A Major HRO Provider Will Divest: This seemed like a sure thing. But let’s be honest, the large market HR Outsourcing (HRO) industry remains plagued with challenges and 2008 was an awful year for most providers.  Missed earnings.  Delayed implementations.  Major write downs.  It’s a head-scratcher that many continue to play in the space. What I didn’t control for was the fact that providers would simply change the definition of HRO.  That nit aside, I have to concede that no major HRO provider divested of their business in 2008… yet. (NOTE – We still have a few weeks left for Convergys to sell its business unit to a large Indian firm!)  Inflexion Point Grade – F 
3. HR Will (Still) Not Have a Seat at the Table:  Can you believe I used to talk like that?  ”Seat at the table” is on the list of industry phrases that I’ve permanently banned from my vocabulary.  Semantics aside, I do not believe that HR materially progressed against this historic challenge.  This isn’t due to a lack of effort, but instead can be attributed in large part to a tremendous volume of unexpected transactions (see #1 above). And transactions are bad news if you’re an up-and-coming HR change agent.  Sure, there were examples of innovative practices, new ideas and differentiated leadership, but unfortunately those were the exception rather than the rule.  Inflexion Point Grade – B
4. HR Vendor Scrutiny Will Increase: Nailed it! This one proved to be rather obvious in retrospect.  We saw a tremendous number of business combinations over the course of 2008, some serious accounting issues, great concerns over sustainability, huge issues with profitability and a very public court battle over an email entitled “The Naked Truth”.  And guess what, this issue isn’t going away anytime soon.  Inflexion Point Grade – A

Oh well, it looks like I won’t be bonus eligible this year after all.  Fortunately 2009 is right around the corner and who knows what sort of nonsensical mumbo-jumbo I’ll come up with this time around.  Time to polish the old crystal ball and really think this one through.  In the meantime, let’s keep the conversation going. 

In April of 2005, a very unlikely source authored an interesting publication addressing some of these issues.  It was entitled, “Growing Old Together: Firm Survival and Employee Turnover“.  And the authors?  Two researchers from the Federal Reserve Board‘s Divisions of Research & Statistics and Monetary Affairs. This is a very scientific paper, but the abstract does a good job summarizing their thesis:

“Labor market outcomes such as turnover and earnings are correlated with employer characteristics, even after controlling for observable differences in worker characteristics.  We argue that this systematic relationship constitutes strong evidence in favor of models where workers choose how much to invest in future productivity. Because employer characteristics are correlated with firm survival, returns to these investments vary across firm types.  We describe a dynamic general equilibrium model where workers employed in firms more likely to survive choose to devote more time to productivity-enhancing activities, and therefore have a steeper earnings-tenure profile.  Our model also predicts that quit rates should be lower in firms more likely to survive, and should tend to fall during slow times, while job destruction rates should rise.  These predictions, we argue, are borne out by the existing empirical evidence.”  

Ok, so some of this seems pretty obvious.  If your organization is going to make it, you’re going to work a bit harder to ensure that this is, in fact, the outcome.  Is that correct?

“Quite intuitively, workers employed in firms highly likely to survive choose to invest more in future productivity than their counterparts in low survival firms. These investment patterns have several implications for the features of turnover and earnings across firm types in steady state and the evolution of turnover rates following business cycle shocks that are consistent with the relevant empirical evidence.”

And what about quit rates and job destruction?

“We qualitatively evaluate the dynamic properties of our model by computing the transition path between steady states following shocks to total factor productivity (TFP) and gross firm failure rates. Two outcomes of these experiments are particularly notable. First, as in the data, we find that quit rates are procyclical, because workers use slow times to retool (see DeJong and Ingram, 2001). Second, we find that job destruction rates are countercyclical provided gross failure rates for firms rise during recessions, even if the increase is very small as suggested by the existing evidence on corporate failure rates.”

It’s an interesting study.  In effect, they offer evidence that allows you to logically (and dispassionately) understand cyclicality in employment.  To simplify one of their flows, they spoke to the fact that training usually precedes an expectation for higher wages.  During times of training, our productivity would obviously slow, and history has shown that training increases during recessions (DeJong and Ingram, 2001).  If you’re training more, producing less and quitting less often, this can lead to layoffs, something too many Americans are painfully familiar with.

So what should you do?  For employees, the obvious answer may be to do everything in your power to help ensure the survival of your organization.  This is often easier said than done and should not involve stepping over the bodies of your coworkers and peers.  The market will eventually recover and those flaming bridges will come back to haunt you.  Instead, raise your hand and encourage those around you to do the same.  A trench mentality may do nothing more than lead to the fate that you fear the most.  So stay aware of what’s happening around you and let’s keep the conversation going.