The other day, Paul Krugman's NY Times blog had a short post on euphemisms that corporations use when they want to avoid the word lay-offs.
It lead off with a Citigroup coinage that designates the person in charge of layoffs as "the head of productivity." Apparently whoever came up with that gem was never actually around a company when people were expecting layoffs, or in the immediate aftermath of an "action."
Krugman offered his father's experience of being "outplaced."
Actually, I've gotten to use "outplacement" services twice, and, while they never actually outplaced me anywhere, I have to say I really enjoyed hanging out at their offices while I rewrote my resume and figured out what I wanted to do next.
He then mentioned a company that was "amortizing its work force," a term that I would put up there with the ridiculous palaver you occasionally hear about "human capital" and "our employees are our most important assets." (Sometimes, when you want to increase productivity, you just gotta amortize some of those important assets.)
Blog commenters contributed "best shoring" - truly terrible - and "optimized". On commenter noted that when he was laid off, he was “placed into a career transition.” Then there are downsizing, rightsizing, streamlining, and "resource action." Another contributed "stimulated to resign" - a term that makes "best shoring" seem peppy and cheerful.
I worked at one company that, when it announced that one of the senior managers was leaving by request (i.e., was "stimulated to resign"), always said that "X is leaving to pursue entrepreneurial endeavors." (Pencils and apples on street corners, anyone?)
Then there was the famous day, 24 hours after hundreds of people had been frog-marched out of the building with their cartons of personal possessions, when our company president let it slip that he wasn't aware that the lay-offs had occurred yet.
Within hours, a memo went out saying that, of course Joe had known that people were laid off, it was only that 'since they are all still on severance they are still with us in spirit.' (I don't have the exact words - I'm sure someone who worked at Genuity has the e-mail somewhere - but this was the, ahem, spirit of Joe's note.)
One commenter was taking notes or saving memos, quoting an exec who in the wake of a lay-off said,
“We felt it would be better for these individuals if they were free to pursue their wholeness unimpeded by their continued employment here.”
This reminded me of the first time I was "downsized".
I wasn't actually on "the list" - I had, in fact, been one of the execs working up "the list" - and I got into an argument with the company president about how we were going to position the lay-offs to the survivors.
"I'm going to say that, the people we let go were wonderful people, but they weren't the right people to help us moving forward."
"That," I told him, "Is complete BS. We should admit that we screwed up executing our strategy, and that's why we're laying people off."
We went back and forth for a while, and I ended with:
"You can say what you're going to say, then I'll say what I'm going to say, and we'll see who they believe."
Foolish me!
Next thing I knew, I was part of the "resource action," part of the workforce that was amortized.
I was devastated for about 24 hours.
Then I realized that I had personally been best shored and right-sized.
Career-wise - and, as it turned out, friendship-wise - this was the best thing that ever happened to me.
No comments:
Post a Comment