Downsizing - through the looking glass

Last month I was at the SHRM Annual Conference in Delhi, much like a lot of you. While packing for the trip, I knew we had a closed round table scheduled on day two with some big names in the HR world. What I didn’t know was how much it would change the way I look at things. Especially on what HR professionals go through in the process of doing their jobs.

‘Downsizing Right – HR playing it right by the People and the Business’ – the topic of the discussion – I wrote on top of the page. I was ready to learn about some models and stats that I would use for social media promotions.

As people filtered into the lavish room of the Taj Palace and took their seats, they mingled formally. Exchanged cards, and flashed polite smiles.

The moderator asked the first question, “Can you describe the first time you had to fire someone?”

The first person spoke about how vividly she remembers the first person she ever had to fire. She said that she can never forget the face when the person realized that they no longer have a job.

As we went around the table, the responses got increasingly more intense. More personal. More vulnerable. The observers, the hotel staff, and social media managers blurred into the background as more people spoke out.

A CHRO of a huge FMCG company said he was simply instructed to start downsizing. So, he went factory to factory, telling people that they were being let go. He would go to his hotel after communicating the dreadful news.

Every night he would get calls from the families of employees he had just fired. He would spend hours listening to the pleas of mothers who didn’t know how they would send their children to school anymore, of wives who didn’t know where the next meal was coming from. He had no answers. All he could offer was a patient ear.

The VP HR of a software giant sitting across from him asked, “Why don’t HRs get a seat at the table when manpower planning happens? We are not consulted when making business plans. We simply get handed the dirty job when they don’t work out.”

By now the emotional tension in the room was palpable.

A CxO of an HRMS company shared about how he had to let go of a woman who started crying during the meeting. He went home shaken. He got a call that night. Around midnight. The woman had taken her life. He sat in his bed. Changed forever. Broken.

Silence fell upon the room. Everyone sat around with moist eyes. I saw a hand move in compassion and rub his shoulder gently. The moderator sat with his prepared set of questions. Unused. Forgotten. Irrelevant.

A soft voice cut through the silence. “How can the fate of families be determined by numbers on a spreadsheet?”

The moderator tried asking about models or techniques that the experts at the table used to soften the blow of firing someone. There was the odd reference to outplacement services and severance pay.

I had walked in thinking I was going to hear CHROs talk about numbers and models. But I walked out with my worldview changed..

I don’t have any learning to offer you today. In the end, I would like to leave you with what one of my speakers left the table with:

“मुख़्तसर सी ज़िंदगी के
अजीब से अफ़साने हैं ,
यहाँ तीर भी चलाने हैं
और परिंदे भी बचाने हैं. “

Translation: (even though, it won’t do justice to it)
“Strange are the stories
in summary of this life;
One has to shoot arrows,
One has to save the birds as well.”

Do write to me about your thoughts on downsizing and people management. I would love to hear from you.