How do companies decide who to lay off?

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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.

It can vary, depending on business need and local law. It can be entire departments based on just not needing that service / whatever the dept do, anymore or it could be a wholesale cost cutting exercise across the whole business. It can be a mix of the two. There are many variables. In terms of how people are "chosen", again it depends on local law. In the UK, if you are looking to reduce by over a certain number of staff you do have pool all staff who do similar jobs to those in roles you want to reduce and consult with them, discuss ways to avoid redundancy and then ultimately score the individuals on criteria defined during the consultations. And yes things like number of sick days might be chosen as a criteria to select against, along with performance ratings or if someone is on a PIP or not. Like other Pps, I've been on both sides and it's never pleasant.

I was made redundant in public sector, there were 13 people for 6 posts. 7 men and 6 women. We had a competitive interview and the 6 women and one man was let go. The women were being resistant to changes to do with rigid working practices before that, due to having child responsibilities, so I do believe it’s not all about the actual interview answers!

I think that's what the high earners like to think - I always wonder about the people on here who claim to earn a six-figure salary but do nothing all day.

Jobs they don’t need any more or long term poor performers/ difficult people

They don’t look at sick days go make redundancies. The poster is saying it influences who they keep on.
Would you keep on the person with a poor sickness record or no sickness?

in terms of who is made redundant, the official process is generally

• launch new (to be) structure
• match existing people to new job descriptions where possible
• ring fence existing staff with the right skills to interview for the new roles
• anyone left over after this process is redundant.

in reality, companies often try and keep outstanding / preferred workers even if they strictly don’t pass this process- either by letting poor interviews through or writing JDs to suit them

Depends on the firm, but in my experience it's usually performance review results, disciplinary and absence records.

If Ken got rated 'good' on his performance review, and Alan was rated 'needs to improve', then Alan would be the one made redundant.

If both of them had been rated 'good' then it would be a further look into absence and disciplinary history. If both came out the same, then it would become a cost conversation - who would cost less to make redundant.

It ultimately boils down to numbers on a spreadsheet - whether that's your performance rating or the number of days you've had off sick. It was an eye opener for me the first time I had to go through it, and a good learning experience to not get emotionally invested in your job. Don't drink the kool aid corporate bullshit about your team being a family - because if push comes to shove you can be gone the next day.

They do this where I work. Often what happens is that the "wrong" people take up the offer, i.e. the hard workers who know they'd get snapped up by another employer!

Rate and place (in order) based on a criteria usually 2 people come up with.

Bottom are made redundant

I’ve managed the process 3 times and can assure you that personal feelings didn’t impact results nor sick days as mentioned.

This pretty much.

I've been through it on a Matrix people were scored on,
Current performance
Absence rate
Potential future.

Which basically gave them the opportunity to get rid of people who weren't the best, weren't likely to be promoted, were past retirement age or edging towards retirement (low future).

Never good to be on the hard end of a tough decision. I'd only been there a year, and was basically up against 3 people who'd been there 10 years at least. Zero chance they were keeping me over people who'd known their systems inside out

Where my 2 DS’s work, both companies have made recent redundancies, the system both used was a scoring system with marks out of 5 for timekeeping, sickness, loyalty to company, ambition, helpfulness plus a few other things and then those with lowest scores have been made redundant. In DS1 case last year he threatened to leave if he wasn’t given help in his role, they employed someone, only for them to put this persons name forward for redundancy, he has been kept on for now. Also in DS2’s case, he and another person were encouraged to start up a new department and they were promoted, only for one to be made redundant 6 months later, despite being told weekly how great their dept was doing. I don’t agree with this points system, but I suppose it’s kinder to employees.

The voluntary thing is risky - what if the grifting dead wood decides to stay and the competent ones who know they’ll find a new job fairly quickly take the money and run?

When I’ve had to make redundancies what generally happens is I’m given a £. I need to reduce labour costs by. I then look at what my team is doing, decide what types of work are “nice to have” rather than essential and then I map out how many people would be needed to cover what’s left. That usually means a slight change in the current job roles.

I then pool all the affected employees and have a consultation about what the revised job roles will look like. At that point some people will ask for VR. If that doesn’t meet my £ saving requirement and I need to select people, the ones who don’t want to change their job role are selected first, then there is a scoring exercise based on skills which is done by the line manager of the team and then moderated by HR to ensure there has been no institutional bias (like the example above where all the women are let go!). I’ve never taken sick leave into consideration but I would look at disciplinary record and if someone had a live disciplinary mark on their record I’d take that into account but not an expired warning.

This happens - usually the company or organisation doesn’t accept their application for voluntary separation, if they don’t want to lose the talent. The person in this case has to resign to leave instead, with no package, so is incentives to remain.

I went through two rounds of redundancy as the company was downsizing. The first time I was in an department which already was at its lowest staffing level, the group head took voluntary redundancy as she was head hunted away.

The second time we were all offered voluntary redundancy but I was told I had a near confirmed place to stay as I was the only one with an important skill - I speak a second language on mother tongue level -. In the end the junior member of the team went, she saw no real future in the downsized department. She was absolutely right, it took years for us to recover and grow again.

A big factor which hasn’t been mentioned is to get rid of those whose roles are actually redundant and they’re no longer needed. Technically people are not made redundant, job roles are (though obviously that’s a load of bollocks in reality). Eg. If your company decides it is cheaper to outsource their entire sales dept to India, then any UK based sales staff are redundant - ie. there is literally no longer a job role for them. If a factory closes, then by definition the workers are all ‘redundant’.

Do HR staff themselves ever get let go in layoffs/restructuring?

Yes if the business has less staff they'll need less HR Staff.
Ultimately HR are an overhead that doesn't generate income. Someone somewhere needs to balance the books.

I’ve had everyone around me made redundant several times, because, I think, I’d hit a middle management level where they decided I could truck on without a boss or a junior, but neither the boss or the junior could or would do both the hands on and the decisiony stuff. It’s horrible. I’ve actually preferred it the times I’ve been made redundant and was free to get on with my life rather than drowning in work and poor morale in a ravaged company

Those times I was made redundant: one was just me, I had a finite job and I’d come to the end of it. The other time I was one of 500 and the ones in my dept who stayed were mates of the new boss who he’d brought in, but he just got landed with me because I was already there and he didn’t give a shit about me