Everywhere you turn, the current state of the economy is a central topic. The economic crisis is not only an issue in the United States, but a matter of global concern. In fact, the United Nations projects that about 20 million jobs will be lost worldwide by the end of 2009.
As many businesses across the country are facing financial challenges, employees naturally are uneasy about their future with employers. The fears of reductions in workforce loom large in employees’ minds. Minds that are also dealing with adjusting mortgages, rising childcare, fuel, food, and generally a higher cost of living.
Jon Gordon, author of “The No Complaining Rule: Positive Ways to Deal with Negativity at Work,” suggests that employer’s ramp up communication during this period of uncertainty to quell employee fears. By holding weekly meetings, sending out informative newsletters or e-mails, an employer can better manage fears. Gordon says, “Even if things are great, people are still nervous.” When there’s a void in communication, he says, “Negativity fills the void.”
The reality is that as many businesses experience the twinges of financial strain, the first thought often is to turn to staff reductions, as reductions can be a fast and quick cost saving measure. However, the decision can also result in general fear, increased workers’ compensation and employment law claims, a loss of trust, and non-productivity.
There are options that employers should consider before making the decision to cut staff. Some alternatives are highlighted below.
- Have frank and open discussions with staff about financial challenges. Staff may willingly agree to a reduction in pay or hours worked in lieu of undergoing a reduction in staff.
- Consider retraining current employees so that they can assume greater responsibilities and limit the need of having to hire additional workers with specific expertise or limited skills sets.
- Consider cutting back on perks such as employer-sponsored meals and snacks. Although many enjoy workplace perks, most would gladly give them up if it meant saving jobs.
- Consider alternative ways to save money, such as banning color copies, canceling company service subscriptions or limiting employer-sponsored memberships.
- Have employees volunteer to leave early on days where business is slow or set up a rotating schedule of who will go home early on slower days.
The bottom line is if this is a challenging time for your business, be open and share with your staff. Employees are much more willing to compromise and contribute solutions when they feel their input and opinions matter.
Michele O\’Donnell
http://www.articlesbase.com/human-resources-articles/staff-reductions-the-last-resort-722523.html
Please read this and help me?
Please could you find a biased quote for the side of prision does not work and explain what the quote means.
Prison does not work. We know that
Why do we send more and more there? It doesn’t look good
Buzz up!
Digg it
Roger Graef Society Guardian, Monday 5 February 2001 13.54 GMT Article historyWho said that the level of civilisation in any society should be judged by how it treated its weakest members, such as those left forgotten in prison? What government declared that prison was "an expensive way to make bad people worse"?
These are not the words of do-gooding, woolly liberal Guardian readers who care more about the rights of criminals than victims. The first was said by Winston Churchill, then home secretary, calling for parliament to respond to the need for prison reforms. Crucially, he urged that we never give up hope on the capacity of the human heart to change.
The second comes from a white paper published by another Conservative home secretary, David Waddington, in 1990 under Margaret Thatcher. The prison population fell under those Tories, from over 50,000 to 40,000. The subsequent Criminal Justice Act of 1991 ordered sentencers to use prison as "a last resort", and to give reasons why it was necessary for "serious offences". But that required judges, magistrates, and ministers to face up to the primordial British love of punishment – so vividly expressed daily in our tabloids. And from Kenneth Clarke onwards, they flunked it. As a result, our prisons are now overflowing with half again as many people as only a decade ago. By 2005, the population may have doubled to 90,000.
And these are "our" prisons. People are sent to fester behind bars in such numbers using our precious taxes, for our protection and in an attempt to win our votes. When we read the immensely sad stories in this newspaper during the past week, or hear the savage indictment of Brixton prison conditions by Gen Sir David Ramsbotham, Her Majesty’s inspector, we cannot merely shake our heads and move on to worrying about where we will take our children skiing at half term.
The vast majority of the people now behind bars will be emerging in due course. If they have TB, we will breathe their germs on tubes and buses. If they are mentally ill, they will become our problem soon enough. If they are untrained and unemployable, it is our houses and cars they will be ransacking for saleable goods. If they go in for modest offences, and emerge angrier and better skilled both at heavier crimes and avoiding detection, prison will not have "worked" for the rest of us.
Moreover as Emrys James and David Wilson both pointed out, these people are not a sub-race, but people like us, with the same complex feelings, the same urges, vices, restlessness and dreams. Research shows that offending is widespread among all social classes, especially among teenagers and young adults. The difference is who gets caught.
The appalling vista laid out in the Guardian’s investigation is so bleak it is tempting to believe nothing can be done. But the experience of Grendon is inspiring: the 40 years it took to build a second one tells us more about our love of punishment than our concern for redemption and community safety.
Restorative justice operates in the wing communities in Grendon in ways that could change the whole culture of the prison service: complaints and discipline, bullying and many other grievances that now add to the sense of injustice both from inmates and staff would be far better settled through mediation, in which both parties can feel involved. Moreover, mediation and reparation with their victims brings home to offenders the real consequences of their actions while prison makes them feel victimised.
If the government is committed to "what works" as its guide for criminal justice policy and crime reduction, then it must bite the bullet and face down public ignorance and vindictiveness which now places prison as the main option, and all else as an alternative to prison. It should again be a last resort.
Safety does require some people to be locked up. Prison can lead damaged people to reconsider their lives and learn new skills, take new options. The arts in prison are especially effective both as tools for expression beyond violence and as a route to education and social skills. They too suffer from lack of staff and resources.
But to work effectively with those who need to be incarcerated, the prison service must be freed from the disastrous burden of those who could be dealt with effectively and far less expensively in the community.
Moreover, for the vast majority of inmates, the loss of local connections with family, job and home sentences them again to return to crime. Is that really why we are spending so much in scarce financial and human resources, and destroying so many families in the process – to increase future crime? The real scandal of prison is that by Churchill’s test we are u
;o churchill? Ooooh Yess
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Liberal do-gooding claptrap. If prisons were really unpleasant places (like they are supposed to be) then no inmate would risk the chance of going back inside by re-offending.
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