Speed It Up Boys! Coping with Layoffs.

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This morning I read in Forbes, “Layoffs in Tech Now a Permanent Feature.”  Dell, JC Penney, and Disney are announcing fresh layoffs.

It made me think of Lucy in the Chocolate Factory.  You know – that classic routine where a frantic Lucille Ball can’t cope with the chocolates coming faster and faster down the conveyor belt.  But like George Bernard Shaw said, “When a thing is funny, search it carefully for a hidden truth.”

The truth is, layoffs leave people with more work to get done, but no more time in which to do it.  If you are laying off people and not providing for the crushing impact on the remaining staff, how are you any different from Lucy’s boss going, “Speed it up boys”?  How will your employees not end up pulling a Lucy:  becoming so stressed they stop performing well or so discouraged they quit?

Here are two vital statistics if your company is cutting:

1. Interruptions cost the U.S. economy $588 billion a year.  That’s according to a report by Basex.
2. The average worker loses 40-60% of their time to interruptions.  That’s from years of research by my own company, self-reported by our clients. That’s right – half of their precious time is stolen from them by unplanned, unwanted, and unproductive interruptions!

If you’re planning layoffs, or if your company has had one recently, or if your company is trying to avoid one, you need to know how to recover employee time stolen by interruptions.  I wrote a book that tells you how:  The Time Bandit Solution….

Edward G. Brown is President, Co-Chairman, and co-founder of Cohen Brown Management Group, the leading sales and service culture change specialist for the financial services industry.