Here’s a what if for you all this week.
If you were given a choice to layoff 1/3 of your employees (with no reduction in workload) or take 9 months severance, which would you do?
I’m pretty sure I know what I’m going to do, but will be waiting until the last possible moment to commit in case I change my mind. In my case, I could live 3-4 years on my savings (not counting the severance), but that would set back my retirement plans substantially. I’m not looking for advice, just thought this would be a good discussion topic and I’m curious how others would handle this in their own context (not in my shoes).
9 months severance. Here’s how I see it:
- layoffs - always awkward, and ticks people off; also, if they’re laying off my team, I’m probably getting axed soon anyway
- severance - basically paid vacation, I can easily find a job in that timeframe
I’m the type that would always take the fall for my team too, that’s just who I am. I wouldn’t even think twice about it or even bother running the numbers.
When I look at what they’re creating, I can see that they are trying to protect a lot of the “in” leaders and so they’re laying off too many workers and keeping too many leaders. I have no doubt they’ll have to make leadership cuts next year since they are approaching this completely backwards, so I definitely don’t see staying as “safe”.
I’m optimistic that I’ll be able to find a job quickly enough that the severance is actually a bonus, but I haven’t looked for a job in a long, long time, so I might be deluding myself. I have enough connections in the company that I could probably land something else, but the idea of taking a little break sounds nice. We just had a major reorg last year (when they should have made this change) that has been brutal to implement. We are just now getting stable from that and this is going to hit my employees hard.
When someone offers a large sack of cash to leave, I wouldn’t take it as a sign to stay. Unless your employees are super inefficient right now, keeping the same workload for 2/3 the head count sounds like being setup for failure.
The headcount reduction was the major thing for me. We’re merging 3 teams, which I expected for a long time now, but I expected more leadership cuts and fewer worker cuts. If I stay, I will have to significantly reduce the quality of work or drive my employees to burn out. I’m not very interested in either option.
