Regardless of its domain, each and every organization experiences times of difficulty and economic instability during which revenue is low and resources are scarce. In many occasions, Human Resources (HR) departments are unable to concurrently comply with the needs of the company and those of its employees. At this point, they are obliged to determine their priorities. In other words, HR departments need to find a way to use with their current budget to provide employee salaries, benefits, and company resources. Ultimately, the organization will have to either cut down employee salaries, work with an insufficient supply of work necessities, or resort to employee termination. Although it appears to be the most daunting one, companies are usually coerced to carry out the third option. This process can be extremely agonizing, both its decision making and execution aspects, especially if your team is composed of highly talented workers who are of close prowess.. The following are some helpful tips that can help you carry out the termination process:

1. Based on What Criteria?

A multitude of factors must be taken into account when devising these criteria. First of all, you must determine which departments are the most crucial for you at the moment and which are the strongest. Measuring the strength of each department will help you in figuring out which ones will be the best at withstanding losses in order to ensure that all departments maintain a decent level of performance. After determining which departments would better cope with terminations and which are currently the most crucial to the prosperity of your organization, you need to evaluate your employees within different departments. Indeed, there is no uniform criteria that can be applied to evaluate all employees. This varies according to each employee’s job title. While taking that into account, the key factors for appraising your employees are: quality of work, attendance, meeting deadlines, exhibiting effective communication skills and positive relationships with coworkers, and the breadth of their knowledge in their particular area of work.

2. Advice on the Execution

• Be considerate of your employees’ feelings

From an employee’s perspective, being informed of your termination can be tragic news, especially if this job is your only source of income or if you have a family to provide for. Therefore, it is critical that you be mindful of your employees’ feelings. This can be done by addressing them in a calm manner and by emphasizing that there are other opportunities and alternatives that they can pursue, as this is not an end to their career..

• Try to Provide Some Kind of Compensation or Alternatives

Carrying out this process may seem excruciating and will render you to feel cruel and insensitive. However, this can be reduced by trying to compensate the employee for their termination. This can be done by either writing your ex-employee a good recommendation letter or demoting your employee to a lower position with an affordable salary.

In conclusion, all organizations go through economic crises. Sometimes, companies resort to terminating the jobs of some employees in an attempt to overcome such crises. This process can be an extremely difficult one, and many points need to be taken into consideration when making these decisions. However, fear no more! It can be made easier by following the aforementioned tips.

by Zaid Tabaza

Zaid Tabaza