I just spent over an hour typing this blog, then hit "Publish" and apparently, Wikia logged me out without saving it. GRUMBLE...
If you've ever experienced a mass layoff situation from an Enterprise Firm who just hired a new CEO, you've been through "Workforce Reduction". If you've ever worked for a medium sized firm where managers who lack leadership skills, technical skills, and organizational skills remained while you got sacked for some bogus trumped up reason, you've worked for a company who's middle management will use "Workforce Reduction" to cover their tracks and prevent their exposure as the cause of the problem.
High employee turnover is common in some industries, but that is often used as an excuse for superviors to fire staff members to cover their lack of leadership and organizational skills. There are people in supervisor and management positions at companies who shouldn't be managing people, because despite the bosses having a college degree, they have weak people skills, weak organizational skills, and no leadership skills. There are right and wrong ways to do things. There are ethical and unethical ways to do business. Unfortunately, self preservation, dishonesty, and treachury are far too common in the management chains of both large and small as well as publicly traded and private firms.
Ever work at a firm where you are tasked with doing part of your Supervisor's job, which isn't part of your job description? Take exception to that and don't be too surprised if you are walked to the door. Ever work at a company where someone who clearly doesn't have the skill to do the job is excelling and being touted by management as being the "best" of the staff? Don't express an opinion about that to any of your co-workers, because one of them is likely to leak that to management and then, guess who gets walked to the door? YOU. I once worked someplace where a woman who was known to be having an affair with the manager suddenly took a liking to me. She'd bend over my desk in low cut tops and then on one particlar day, she walked up to me in the hallway while I was standing their talking with a female staff member, turned around, lifted up her skirt, and bent over, exposing herself to both of us. I reported her for sexual harrassment. The result of that? I was the one who got fired. Why? I was told that it's not possible for an attractive woman to sexually harrass a man.
Really?
Yea. I reported it to the EEOC and they dropped the case for a "lack of evidence", since an attractive woman apparently can't sexually harrass a man. Of course, if I was a woman who'd had a male co-worker expose himself, he'd have been arrested. Ironic thing is that company is mostly managed by women. You can see how well that worked out for me.
Despite recent media reports of increased jobs and lower unemployment, this will be balanced out by "Workforce Reduction" policies that insure that weak management personnel continue to miss-manage certain companies in certain industries. There are far too many instances to count of miss-management at big firms and medium firms, due to greed and self preservation.
Watch your back, front, and sides and listen for that long "SWOOSH" sound that typically comes when the axe swings to sack you. It can either come from a mass layoff situation or someone personally fealing threatened by your ability to do the job better and sacking you to prevent you from doing a better job than the lame who managed you. It's called "Workforce Reduction".