More Businesses Should Think Redeployment and Not Layoffs

Employees no longer perform the same job their entire career, let alone stay with the same company all of their working lives. The business of business is more fluid than ever, thanks to global markets and the Internet, and the labor pool likewise must be fluid.

Yet, hiring and letting go of workers is neither humane for employees nor a way to retain talent. While not every employee can remain with a company as business priorities change, many or even most employees can be redeployed to other positions within a company if adequate thought and preparation is exercised.

For instance, two large Indian firms, HCL Infosystems and Wipro (News - Alert), recently shuttered their PC manufacturing businesses due to shifting market conditions. While they announced the closures in late 2013, they had been preparing for the shift for more than a year. Along with the usual shift in strategy and resources, the two companies also developed redeployment plans for employees so the shift in business wouldn’t also mean a large change in employees.

According to Ruchi Sinha, an organizational behavior expert, there are five points to keep in mind when setting up a redeployment plan.

First, plan. Redeployment must be done in phases, and it is important to keep the core of each department intact and transform through peripheral duties. This limits organizational upheaval.

Second, assess redundant and outdated roles, positions and functions to determine both what is no longer needed within a company and what other jobs the redundant employees could assume. This second step is greatly benefited by workforce management software, which can allow human resources to accurately keep track of what employees actually are doing on the job, as well as spot trends that can point the way to changing roles and positions.

Third, focus on retraining.

“Training is the best way to manage the transferability of skill sets and to manage the employee's motivation to transfer into a new role,” noted Sinha. “Cross-training programs can act as incentives and non-monetary recognition to motivate employees to transition into new roles.”

Fourth, manage perceptions. It is important for the head of the organization to announce the strategy behind the reorganization, and not just that the reorganization is taking place. Employees may be working for a company, but at the most fundamental level it is a partnership between management and employees, so it is important to get employees onboard with the changes by explain why they are necessary and where things are going. This also helps keep down anxiety among employees because there are less unknowns.

Finally, it is important to have alternatives.

“Leaders need to explore creative ways to keep the employees engaged during economic downtime, while still maintaining a committed workforce,” Sinha noted. “Some such options include, mandatory vacation days, compressed workweeks, voluntary sabbaticals and employee leasing to strategic business partners, or even non-profit organizations.”

Lines of business change. But that doesn’t mean employees should always be changing, too.

Edited by Stefania Viscusi

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