Why Indian Employers Need to Hold on to Employees in Difficult times.

Author: Bijoyendra Sanyal

Remember the Dot com bust and techies going bonkers in the Silicon Valley? It was a time of crisis and both companies and employees were loosing their fortunes within days. The NASDAQ was on a free fall and there was eerie feeling sweeping across the corridors of the technology behemoths. But the folks at Silicon Valley had good taste. So even when they new they had say their entire staff goodbye, they came up with an innovative ways to give the pink slips.

Parties were hosted and employees were explained the situation and were given parting gifts. HR managers actively sought to reemploy the retrenched employees in other sectors of the economy using their references and such moves even when the overall the atmosphere was grim helped to relieve the situation.

Now contrast this with the recent Jet episode which found employees in their official dresses being left stranded outside their office gates. Well Indian businesses have largely never relied on innovativeness to deal with crisis situations; however such haste and insensitivity hardly helps the cause of the industry. Not surprisingly the Murli Deora, the minister for petroleum called the decision as “immature”.

Difficult times call for closing of ranks and not sending the workforce into disarray by announcing headline grabbing job cuts. Organizations should look to expand their business lines add more offerings, get more out their people rather than going in more mass retrenchments. Businesses who can ride over tough times by taking their employees into confidence can easily achieve high growth when good times come calling.

However, even at such difficult times hope survives and the recent news that heeding to his “call of consciousness” Naresh Goyal has decided to take back all the retrenched employees, is a good omen. This decision is likely to rub off positively on the aviation sector which has been reeling under crisis in recent times. As the economic recession unfolds we can only keep our finger crossed and see what more is store for us.