How to Downsize Your Company Without Losing Talent

While talent management identifies, develops, engages, retains, and deploys organisations workforce to achieve strategic objectives, in order to maximise both individual and corporate performance, talent engagement activities seek to attract, develop, engage, retain, and deploy talents to accomplish organisational goals.

Organisations carry out talent engagement activities from time to time. And these engagement activities are performed through professional development; employee feedback; rewards and recognition; team-building exercises; wellness initiatives; flexibility; career milestones; and autonomy.

Talent Engagement Before Corporate Downsizing

Talent engagement activities provide opportunities for organisations to acknowledge and reward outstanding performance; train, mentor, offer growth opportunities to talents that are deserving; support and promote mental wellbeing of employees; create clear channel for communication between managers and subordinates; support employee assistance programs; organised social events; create room for employees to contribute to significant decision making process; celebrate years of service, career milestones; and offer flexible work arrangements.

Findings shows that talent engagement activities enhances innovation among employees; it improves retention rate, as a large percentage of employees are less likely to leave; it enhances the level of productivity, and foster superior customer experiences. Today’s competitive market environment has called for organisations to recognise the significance of talent engagement activities, not just talent management activities in enforcing success, especially when downsizing or restructuring the company.

Downsizing Strategically Without Losing Talent

It has become even more necessary to downsize seeing how companies try to keep their business thriving. Corporate downsizing is the intentional reduction of a company’s workforce, operations, or assets to improve efficiency, reduce costs, and increase profitability.

Downsizing can involve the form of layoffs, mergers, acquisitions, or the sale of non-core businesses. While downsizing can take place, restructuring is also another way company uses to keep the best employees while others are laid off. Restructuring involves a fundamental transformation of a company’s organisation, operations, or strategy to adapt to changing market conditions, improve competitiveness, or recover from financial distress.

Though downsizing and restructuring can be a necessary strategy for companies facing financial difficulties, increased competition, or changing market conditions. In Nigeria, for instance, many companies have had to restructure or downsize in response to the country’s economic downturn.

Corporate downsizing can be a mistake if not implemented carefully. In Nigeria, mass layoffs have led to social and economic instability, particularly in industries such as manufacturing and oil and gas. In addition, downsizing can damage a company’s reputation, lead to a loss of talent and expertise, and create uncertainty among remaining employees.

The Role of HR in Downsizing and Restructuring

Corporate downsizing and restructuring require careful planning and execution. Human resources play a critical role in communicating the reasons for downsizing, managing the layoff process, and supporting affected employees. In doing this, the labour laws and regulations are navigated with utmost professionalism. The complexities in navigating these laws can sometimes make it challenging to implement downsizing and restructuring initiatives.

Before downsizing should take place, human resources must be allowed to play a significant role in navigating the complexities of corporate downsizing and restructuring, and provide companies professional and feasible solutions as they adapt to changing market conditions and the realities of today’s economy. The input of human resources in handling the retention and lay off of employees would help organisations to downsize without losing their best talent.

That way, talent engagement with the employees that are left after restructuring can increase.

Conclusion

Talent engagement activities are designed to help organisations align to business objectives, at the same time solidifying the bond between members of the team in an organisation. This contribute to high-performing workforce ready to gain a competitive edge, while prioritising productivity.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *