No Layoff Zone
(ed. note – I had written this post the day after Thanksgiving with the intention of running it today. Yesterday, Mark Stelzner over at Inflexion Advisors posted this little gem which pretty much says the same thing. I decided to post mine anyway because it’s a point that bears repeating . . and I love the YouTube clip!)
Mr. Bartender and I are getting into the holiday spirit which includes watching our favorite Christmas movies. The latest blast from the past was National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.
For those of you who have seen the move, the ending always reminds me of this notion I had . . . that there’s an arbitrary point in time during the year when employees expect no significant changes will be made that impact the workplace. I was convinced that point was Thanksgiving. After Thanksgiving, employees expected nothing earth shattering to happen until after the New Year.
Examples of ‘significant’ changes include: last minute cancellation of the holiday party, any change in company bonus plans, substitutions to the annual holiday turkey distribution, etc. You get my drift.
The other significant area was layoffs. I was certain it’s an unspoken expectation that, if you are employed at Thanksgiving, you will not be laid off during the month of December. (Please notice that I didn’t say fired. You do something stupid, you will get fired.)
Boy was I wrong. Years ago I realized the flaw in my logic when my boss called me during the Thanksgiving holiday to explain we were doing a small reduction in force. When? The week between Christmas and New Years. I’m thinking – you’ve got to be kidding. Nope, he wasn’t.
To this day, I fail to understand the reasoning. Did the company just wake up one morning and read their P&L? Of course not. Didn’t they see this coming in their financial forecasts? Sure they did. But they didn’t plan, prepare, or communicate. And, who were the victims of that poor management? The employees.
For my friends in HR…if you’ve ever had to do a RIF during the holidays, then you can probably empathize with Clark W. Griswold (Chevy Chase) during this scene in Christmas Vacation. (VIEWER DISCRETION ADVISED: Turn down the volume – this video clip could be NSFW. Unfortunately, it’s reality.)
