Our idea of wonderful association when we meet our dream employer is not as simplistic as we would makeit out to be. A lot of tangibles as well as intangibles give shape to what is essentially more like a marriage. How you may ask does this come about?
Firstly if we assume the interaction as more of a barter then things do become that much easier. In a nutshell, 3 types of relationships are evident ;
Incremental : Here hiring is the bread and butter of the company and you have seen so many corporations lap up talents this way. Lehmann Brothers, Goldmann Sachs, Barings Bank, ING international just to name a few financial giants are famous for hiring in numbers. Similarly major conglomerates like General Motors, Unilever, Colgate-Palmolive, Sony, Philips etc have established a trend of numbers based recruitment be it for operations, maintenance, sales, marketing & public relations. These may be pioneering efforts or trendsetting but what it does is it increases flab besides putting a significant pressure on bottom lines during a recession. The other negative feature is mass layoffs, retrenchments & downsizing. Nevertheless all corporations however big or small are all answerable to their shareholders and to be seen in a positive limelight will not let go of this process and why should they.
Displacement : The culture of displacement based hiring is highly popular or common in high skills, ability & pride based work. The term 'displace' is to imply or suggest that one would be better served on a different perch or branch.Financial corporations have always been known to often poach, acquire & nurture such high flyers from the competition. What it eventually does is transfer skill sets from a mid-sized company to a larger one or establishing time tested practices from leaders to followers. Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, AIG are the front runners in this category & such hiring. This was amply demonstrated by the prevalence of high flying executives with fat bonuses & perks being splurged on them. Companies like General Electric, World Telecom, Enron all profited by this approach.
Replacement : If we had to put a finger on the most obvious and resultant outcome to the above manpowerintensive, growth-oriented steps this would be it. It could be akin to the seeds of discord having been sown
too early to benefit from a late monsoon or rains. The recent economic meltdown, recession & slump can be attributed to exponential growth, project-based hiring as well as image. It is a direct fallout of Displacement as well as Incremental hiring strategies. This is not to say no nation, economy or corporation has had no solution at hand to deal with such crises. Airlines, Hospitality, Automobile industry regularly buck or deal with this trend by regular downsizing, cutbacks or more often rollbacks. The efforts of IT companies to restructure their workforce is tantamount to the need for operational as well as efficiencies of scale the most notable being IBM, HP & Oracle.
However unlike the positive steps in the first two categories, the final ones takes no prisoners. So what is left here is to take stock of what comes in, what goes out first & what must be retained. It remains to be seen that if the tightening of belts & coffers will eventually lead to a definite proliferation of the cycle as we know it. Technologies are leading us forward, human intervention is becoming redundant with the advent of microprocessors, operation
modules, process & operational efficiencies.
One cannot put a finger on a process saying this works & this does not. That would disturb the overall dynamics of it. What needs to be borne in mind is that a little of fine tuning, time lines, precision
would aid employer & employee effectively. Employees are there to contribute, employers to reward them effectively for such as a meaningful contribution to both corporation, culture & society
