Downsizing and Employee Morale In and Around the United States
Over time, corporations around the country have been preoccupied with their employee’s numbers and with putting into operation strategies to reduce them. The purpose has been to create lean organizations, trimmed of bureaucratic fat and bristling with competitive muscle. In the United States alone, some 2.5 million workers have lost their jobs to these programs since the 1980’s. “In the first quarter of 1994, there were 192,572 layoffs, averaging over 3,106 jobs a day (Downs, 1995).” “By 1992, more than 85% of the Fortune 500 companies had downsized during the last five years, and 100% of them were planning to do so in the next five years (Cameron, 1994).” Employees will likely have to grieve both the loss of their co-workers and the loss of job security they once felt. Even though they still hold their position, ever-present feelings of doom and suspicion often haunt the workplace.
The best course of action is one where information is shared as openly as possible.
Downsizing, rightsizing, outsourcing, restructuring, streamlining, and re-engineering have been the popular buzzwords used to describe the process of letting employees go. These words give a respectable image of strategic insight to what would otherwise be regarded simply as extensive layoffs or firings. Some have defended the trend toward layoffs, pointing out that the mission of a business is to make a return and to provide a profit for the investors. In this narrow scope of definition, the layoffs seem to be working. With the Dow Jones industrial average above 10,000 and corporate profits at a 25- year high, corporate America may have fulfilled Wall Streets highest expectat ...