How do companies decide who to lay off?

[Cfjhffcs]

I've been a SAHM for most of my married life. Not complaining about it. Have 2 beautiful DC and now just working at some low level admin job.

So this isn't about me worrying about my job at all. I'm just wondering how in corporate organisations they decide who in particular gets laid off when they are doing a round of cuts.

Usually it’ll be a whole department / job roles that will be discontinued / people who have worked there the least amount of time (under 2 years)

In honesty they decide who they want to get rid of and who doesn’t work as hard then find data/give points to the other employees they want to stay, they will just mark the ones they want lower on the scoring so they come bottom.

Thanks for the answers

I've seen lots of people laid off because they're causing problems in the workplace, but not enough to sack them. Sometimes they'll cut the people with the highest salaries, because it gets them to the payroll reduction they need while losing the fewest headcount. It can also be a combination of the two factors.

I found where I work it seemed to be the people who were paid the most in some departments then those who had been there the least time.
That was mass layoffs- went down about 100 odd staff.

Also, the amount of sickness each individual has had. I once worked in a company that were thinking out the workforce. Two people who started together and did the same job role, came up for redundancy. The one who had the least time off sick was the one that stayed. Also, disciplinarys are also taken into account.

In formal redundancy situations, the criteria used to select are set out as part of the process.

Alternatively, the organisation may prefer to simply offer individuals a voluntary severance package, the details of the offer and acceptance being confidential as part of the offer.

The voluntary severance usually offers a higher payout than redundancy to rncoursge people to accept and go with the minimum of fuss and process.

is that any help to explain how it might work in real life?

Wait, why did they look at sick days? Did they assume someone was faking it? Or did they just want someone who took less days off sick?

They wanted to keep the person that had cost them less in sick pay.

As a head of department in a previous company, we had to downsize about a third of the remote workforce.

We literally had a meeting with me, a couple of HR bods and my manager, and went through the department name by name. Each one I was asked to give an opinion on, then they were given a red, amber or green flag based on my answer.

Needless to say all my friends and the good ones stayed. Those that I'd worked alongside in the past and had been shit or pissed me off were booted.

You want to get rid of dead wood and when it comes to sickness if someone is absent a lot they are not great for business. There is protection under the disability discrimination act and equality act, think that’s right I’m a bit rusty . What people do not seem to understand is that as long as procedure is followed people can be got rid of staff even after reasonable adjustments etc are followed if they still can't fulfill their duties.

Imagine 2 employees Sharon and Tracey. Sharon has the odd day sick here and there over 5 years she has the equivalent of 12 weeks off. It’s very disruptive, it’s in dribs and drabs and often bolts on to a weekend. Tracey has 12 off in a block as she has a major operation. Not all sick leave is equal whether Sharon has a genuine illness or is skiving it’s hard to manage a work load with someone unreliable.

In any profit driven business it’s bad. It’s why the public sector has some bloody shocking employees as they are much harder to sack. I worked in it for years and met a few Sharon’s. They give the public sector a bad name.

DH was made redundant because he was too expensive too keep - often getting rid of a few high earners has the same, or better, financial impact than getting rid of several lower earners.

But aren't the high earners the ones doing the most for the company?

No, sometimes people look great on paper and interview well but then don’t deliver when it comes to performance. Sometimes people come from much larger firms where their work performance was mediocre but it flew under the radar due to the scale of the company and they just don’t add value in a different environment. Sometimes the boss hires a bunch of his mates and they’re getting paid a huge salaries to do the same job a couple of junior staff members were already doing quite well. Other times the person was doing a great job but then winds up with addiction issues etc….

I’ve had to make redundancies and been at risk of redundancy. Not something I enjoy. Selection has varied. Once it was a site closure so everyone was at risk, I looked hard for redeployment but only a few got other jobs as there weren’t many opportunities and the other sites were quite a distance away. Another time I had to cut costs as the business had lost a customer so I looked at all the work activities, decided what we could stop doing and then what impact that would have on headcount. I had 7 team members doing the same job and going forward I only would need 4. I used a selection panel which looked at absence, disciplinary record and skills and those with the lowest scores were selected. During the time I was at risk, the whole team were selected, with some new jobs created which had to be applied for.

All a bit shit which ever way you cut it.

Not necessarily, no. Would you rather get rid of a manager who sits at a desk all day, or two highly-skilled production workers who actually make the stuff the company sells?

@Cfjhffcs DH was doing a great job, but they needed to make a lot of savings fast. Short term tactics - saving money - outweighed long term strategy - developing workforce.

In our place they ask for volunteers first ( some people want to take the package) but sometimes the longer you have been somewhere the more expensive it is for them to get rid of you so some may not be picked even if they do volunteer. It's much cheaper to make people redundant if they haven't been with the company as long.

These days it’s usually about cutting costs.
Let go the 55yr old on £80k and hire a 30yr old replacement on £50k
Cut a team of 8 to 5 and expect them to do the same workload

What kind of disciplinary stuff would people have in a work environment?

I ask because I've never been in such a situation.

Like I can't imagine people getting "told off" at work.

@Cfjhffcs formal warnings ie written warnings for conduct or misconduct. Such as not following policies, making serious mistakes, inappropriate behaviour towards colleagues, etc. anything not meeting standard really. If you had a warning absolutely expect to be selected above colleagues who don’t.

I was given a disciplinary (pre-Covid) for "constant lateness" of 5-15 minutes. I was flabbergasted because I often worked late, had to get to at the crack of dawn several times per month to do site visits to audit companies, which also meant that I was coming home at 8-10pm, and didn't really take my full hour lunch. This was a company with flexible working and I was not the only person waltzing in after 9am disturbing an otherwise quiet office.

After that disciplinary I made sure to catch an earlier train and called in sick when I was running late/trains were cancelled. I took my full lunch hour and left at 5:31 every day. Yes I was petty. Yes stuff ended up being late, but tbh we were under resourced for the volume of work we were expected to do anyway.

Turned out my manager's manager (old boomer boy) wanted to teach me a lesson because he expected his team to uphold certain standards that were never actually communicated to any of us and I got an apology after he was let go at extremely short notice under a shroud of mystery. I can't say for certain whether that's true or she was backtracking and covering her arse but I ended up leaving for another job anyway. I probably sound blasé but that whole experience took a horrible toll on me, made me extremely anxious and triggered migraines and insomnia.

Step 1 is 'natural wastage' i.e. not replacing people who leave. It's annoying because the person who leave may have been useful and also cheap so not replacing them isn't helpful. Afterwards, people have mentioned voluntary redundancy and then I think they do realise that cutting high or high-ish earners will save them more money than cutting low ranking staff or just those who've been there the least.

So where I work if a certain number from a certain dept are going to be cut then everyone has to interview for their job and the lowest scorers go. I suspect in reality they know beforehand who’s going to be given a high score and who is going to be scored low.

If it is redundancies they should put together a criteria and the management will go and discuss each person and mark them against it.

Truth is that its what Hardlyworking posted, the mates of the managers get to stay, anyone that they don't like or has pissed them off goes.