Page 41 - Socially-responsible-restructuring-Effective-strategies-for-supporting-redundant-workers

Socially responsible restructuring
Effective strategies for supporting redundant workers

approaches also include parallel support for the survivors, the workforce
remaining after the downsizing. This US practice review suggested that both
public and private organisations that had successfully downsized, had commonly
provided structured and well resourced ‘career transition assistance’ to both
separated and surviving employees. This included ‘skill and career transition
training, relocation assistance, outplacement assistance, CV writing assistance,
access to office equipment, paid time off, child care, financial counselling, and
access to job fairs and to Internet job placement sites’.
According to a more recent survey by the American Conference Board
(Muirhead, 2003), ‘compassionate downsizing’ concerns offering services
‘beyond outplacement’ and ‘to help transition employees with respect and care’. It
can become an opportunity for business success by ‘preserving employee
morale and generating continued goodwill in the community’. Most respondent
firms offered, in addition to severance pay, outplacement support, job placement
assistance, and priority consideration for reassignment to another job within the
company to employees who have been laid off. Some improved their severance
packages by providing to displaced workers, and those at risk, career and
educational counselling, interview coaching, as well as education and training
benefits supplementary to outplacement. Notably among most of these firms,
education and training support was additional to career counselling and not a
replacement for it, though more than three quarters of the firms surveyed
providing education and training benefits were more likely to offer these to middle
management and technical employees than to other levels of staff. The term
‘compassionate downsizing’ has no currency as yet in Europe. What underpins
the practice in these US enterprises seems to be that social responsibility in
restructuring had a strategic significance. The top four reasons for offering
transition benefits were to sustain the morale of retained employees;
demonstrate the company’s commitment to remaining employees; manage
former employees’ perceptions of the company; and maintain the company’s
reputation in the community. As Summerfield (1996) has argued, increasingly
lean companies cannot afford to be seen to be mean. Recent work in the UK
(CIPD, 2009) has highlighted the monetary, as well as reputation costs that come
from downsizing. Many large employers in Europe offer outplacement support
when they make people redundant. Just as with other forms of career
development support at work, the level and intensity of support is often related to
the seniority of those being made redundant.
A comparative assessment of the processes and content of collective
dismissals in four northern European Member States drew attention to this
differentiation of career development support (Storrie, 2007). It also noted the

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