As the economy heads towards an uncertain future, many businesses are starting to feel financial pressure and deliberating their options to cut costs. For many employers, redundancy is one of the easiest ways to scrimp and save wherever possible. Unless you’re a heartless monster, nobody wants to let go of their most skilled and valuable team members just like that. Thankfully, there are still several options to explore before going this route. Here’s what your business can do to avoid redundancies.
Consolidate your processes
Consolidation can help reduce redundancy in your business by presenting economies of scale and streamlining the process of accomplishing specific tasks. The best way to consolidate processes is to use a platform that specializes in these kinds of operations, such as ServiceNow. All you’ll need is a reputable ServiceNow implementation partner to help you get set up, and you’ll be ready to go. These kinds of platforms help everyone keep track of what their priorities are and how to optimize their workflow.
Freeze your recruitment process
As great as it is to see fresh faces in your company, you should hold off on recruiting any new team members for as long as it takes your business to get back on its feet again and until things are more stable. What you can do is make the most out of the resources you currently have by redistributing workload or hiring internal applicants instead. Hiring more people in the face of job uncertainty is also not a good look on you and will most likely lower morale among your staff.
Pinch pennies in other areas
Redundancy should be considered an absolute last resort in this situation. There’s a reason you hired your staff members, and it’s most likely not because of a lack of options. Take a good look at all your business’ finances and think about how else you can pinch pennies in other areas. The overpriced artisanal coffee in your pantry, that fancy new printer, your landline phone connection — toss whatever you can. Who uses landline phones these days anyway?
Offer flexible work arrangements
Flexible working arrangements involve either temporarily or permanently reducing hours of work or working from home for lesser pay. While you can’t impose this on all of your staff members, you can still allow your employees to request for this kind of set-up. There’s plenty of people who would take you up on this offer, considering they’ll also be saving on transportation costs in the long run. Just make sure to discuss the new stipulations of your arrangement with your employee so that they know what to expect.
Introduce the concept of job-shares
Job-sharing is another kind of flexible work arrangement to check out. It’s an opportunity for two employees to share the duties and responsibilities of one full-time position. Two employees will be able to take on part-time work while you receive what’s equal to one full-time employee’s work. Of course, as with those arrangements, it’s something that your employees have to volunteer for and not something you can impose on your staff.
With all the unprecedented changes going on in the world today, it can be easy to go full-on panic mode and start doing damage control. But it’s essential to take a breath and think clearly about your options before you begin unloading people from your company left and right. These strategies will help you keep your most valuable employees around as you cut costs to adapt to the new normal.
