Layoffs Are The Result of Slackers

Have you ever seen co-workers who seem to do absolutely nothing during work, or are always away on work from home days? Maybe Dave here will be a good example of these people. This will be a controversial topic of discussion, and most likely has arguments in many different directions. I don’t believe there is a clear and distinctive factor that decides any mass layoffs from companies, and there are all types of opinions. As destructive as company wide layoffs may be, and how disruptive they are to the lives of thousands of people, any corporation will think about layoffs as a means to cut cost and expenses, specially when management and boards believe that the cuts are needed to maintain company strategic goals, or when work efficiency seems to be suboptimal.

Generally, companies will have human resource imbalances across different areas and sub-organizations. When budget is available, hiring will definitely happen, however, in many cases, it does not solve these employee imbalances, but shifts them. Teams that were previously understaffed may not find itself overstaffed, often leading to decreased efficiency, or what I like to call, ‘b*ll touching’. Other teams which may have originally thought that hiring was not necessary, now finds itself in a pinch due to new responsibilities, projects, or other reasons. This endless loop of re-organizing people resources, hiring, and laying off is just part of the corporate world. It is a necessity to maintain healthy levels of capability to take on the necessary projects, while attempting to keep inefficiencies away.

Now, once again, meet Dave. Dave gets to work at 9 every morning and starts texting and getting distracted on his phone until lunch time. Maybe with some 5 minute breaks to look through email or running a couple pieces of code. His distracted time is so long that his screen often timeouts and locks. I luckily happen to sit next to one of these Dave’s. Every time I happen to look up I see a smirk on his face while attentively watching his phone. Meanwhile, his screen is dark, cause it obviously timed out. Surprisingly, maybe after I finished working on 3 different tasks two hours later, and I happen to look up again, his screen is still dark while his face shows the same smirk. Glad it is now lunch time cause he gets to distract himself for the next two hours as well. The rest of the work time is no different, and the lack of efficiency in their work is followed by an extraordinary confidence in their work worthy of being categorized as a Dunning-Kruger effect study case. Their questions to other people often expect some sort of solution or tutorial to their problems, rather than some clarification or guidance. It seems as their entire work and methods rely on obtaining the largest amount of visibility and credit possible, with the least amount of work, just enough for them to maintain their job.

Surprisingly this person ended up getting promoted. Promotion guidelines and timeline compared to other people can always be debated and argued. However, this often puts bad image on everyone else. This directly invalidates the people that work hard to attempt to get a higher job level. Those people see that sub-par and inappropriate behavior and performance are rewarded, yet their hard work seemingly does not get them where they want. This portrays a bad image on management, who either do not see the issues, or are aware of the issues but decide to not tackle them, or maybe they are fine with our efforts not being as important. The latter often possibly gated by some higher level management and their strict restrictions. How are we supposed to be motivated to perform at our best (if we try and want to) when we see rewards going to the people who do the bare minimum, or should have been fired already?

You can call me petty or whatever, yet I do not believe this is a small issue that can be disregarded. Rewarding bad behavior only leads to declining motivation and care from the well performing employees, who will therefore reduce their level of input, feedback, and motivation to do any extra effort if they are not as often rewarded. It will probably lead them to LinkedIn, Workday and interviews to find an escape from this environment. When their notice is in, management will be to blame for such indecisiveness to fire, and are now backed against the wall to find a high performing replacement.

These slackers are partly the reason to blame for layoffs. When the number of these people increases, and the well performing workers start losing motivation due to this and other reasons, the entire organization starts losing effectiveness and becomes inefficient. When costs get squeezed and high level executives start finding out inefficiencies, that is the time where it is most likely that companies start doing layoffs. When that time comes, I will have zero tolerance or sympathy for slackers like these, better yet, I hope they disappear from my sight. Companies are too afraid to fire or let them go, either because they ‘show barely enough’ for that not to happen, or because managers are too afraid to fire. This is often caused by the lack of resolve for having difficult conversations, or because ‘maybe when the projects get busier we will need these workers,’ in hopes that their behavior will change.

Layoffs are unfortunate for (mostly) everyone, and I am fully aware of massive amounts of high performers who have been indiscriminately been let go due to cost cutting decisions from companies. It will cause uneasiness on those remaining with respect with team morale, and job security. All these cycles are normal and will happen, often giving opportunities for those putting in the effort to step up, shine, and receive their deserved raises and promotions. However, if you are Dave, I am not sorry, I hope your next job is not as comfortable.