【本篇文章可學(xué)習(xí)的單詞：多種裁員說法】

It’s not just Twitter. The pink slips are piling up at some of the biggest names in tech. Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Meta, is eliminating more than 11,000 roles, around 13% of the social-media company’s workforce. On November 22nd HP announced up to 6,000 job losses, which would be around 10% of the IT firm’s staff. Amazon’s boss, Andy Jassy, has warned of more cuts next year, on top of those already unveiled in the retailer’s devices and books businesses. Stripe revealed that 14% of the staff at the digital-payments firm were being let go. Snap and Shopify announced their own rounds of lay-offs earlier in the summer.

不僅僅是Twitter。一些最知名的科技公司紛紛發(fā)出解雇通知。社交媒體公司Meta的創(chuàng)始人馬克·扎克伯格正在裁員1.1萬多人，這一比例約占該公司員工總數(shù)的13%。11月22日，惠普宣布裁員6000人，約占公司IT員工總數(shù)的10%。亞馬遜的老板安迪·賈西警告說，除了已經(jīng)在該零售商的設(shè)備和圖書業(yè)務(wù)中推出的裁員計(jì)劃外，明年還會有更多的裁員。據(jù)Stripe透露，其數(shù)字支付公司14%的員工被解雇。Snap和Shopify在今年夏天早些時(shí)候也宣布了各自的裁員計(jì)劃。

Jobs are disappearing in other industries, too. Investment banks have started paring staff in anticipation of a slowdown in dealmaking. Property firms are laying people off as housing markets cool. Beyond Meat, which makes plant-based products, cut almost 20% of its workforce in October.

其他行業(yè)的也在裁員。由于預(yù)期交易活動將放緩，投資銀行已開始裁員。隨著房地產(chǎn)市場降溫，房地產(chǎn)公司正在裁員。生產(chǎn)植物性產(chǎn)品的Beyond Meat公司在10月份裁減了近20%的員工。

The people who suffer most from lay-offs are those who lose their jobs. But the colleagues who are left behind also endure lasting consequences; and for managers, this group is the one that determines success. Some suffer a form of survivors’ guilt, asking themselves why they kept their jobs and colleagues did not. (Only at Twitter do the people leaving feel guilty about those who are left behind.) Others must grapple with the practicalities of replacing departed workers and with the stress of heightened job insecurity: if the axe has fallen once, it may do so again.

受裁員影響最大的是那些失去工作的人。但被留下的同事也要一直承受后果; 對于管理者來說，這個(gè)群體是決定成功的因素。有些人會有一種幸存者的負(fù)罪感，問自己為什么自己保住了工作，而同事卻沒有。(只有在Twitter，離開的人才會對那些被留下來的人感到內(nèi)疚。) 其他公司則必須努力應(yīng)對接替離職員工的現(xiàn)實(shí)問題，以及工作不安全感加劇帶來的壓力: 如果裁員的斧頭落下了一次，可能還會再落一次。

The results can be depressed morale, lower productivity and unexpected costs. Research conducted in 2008 by two academics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison found that, for an average company, downsizing the workforce by 1% was associated with a 31% increase in voluntary turnover rates. That means more disruption as well as additional money spent on filling open positions.

結(jié)果可能是士氣低落，生產(chǎn)力下降和意外成本。威斯康星大學(xué)麥迪遜分校的兩位學(xué)者在2008年進(jìn)行的一項(xiàng)研究發(fā)現(xiàn)，對于一家普通公司來說，裁員1%與自愿離職率增加31%有關(guān)。這意味著更多的干擾，以及更多的資金用于填補(bǔ)空缺職位。

To keep survivors motivated, managers need to get three things right. The first imperative is to appear fair. This is a capacious concept. Fairness involves treating departing colleagues well: one particular wrinkle with the current tech lay-offs is that they affect lots of immigrant workers, whose eligibility to remain in America is now in doubt. It means showing sensitivity about executive compensation: saying that downsizing is the hardest thing you’ve ever done is less credible when profit-related bonuses end up paying for another weekend house.

為了讓幸存者保持動力，管理者需要做好三件事。第一要?jiǎng)?wù)是表現(xiàn)得公平。這是一個(gè)廣泛的概念。公平包括善待即將離職的同事:當(dāng)前科技公司裁員的一個(gè)特別問題是，它影響了大量移民工人，這些人是否有資格留在美國現(xiàn)在還存疑。這意味著要對高管薪酬表現(xiàn)出敏感: 當(dāng)與利潤相關(guān)的獎(jiǎng)金最終被用來支付另一棟周末別墅時(shí)，說裁員是你做過的最艱難的事情就不那么可信了。

Fairness also means sharing the rationale for why individual people have gone, whether because they sat in sputtering businesses or because their own performance was questionable. “Stacked-ranking” systems, in which employees are forced into a ranking of highest to lowest performers, are increasingly out of favour. But in theory at least, they do provide a merit-based measure for decisions on where to make cuts. According to The Information, a news site, Google is going to increase the proportion of employees it identifies as low performers.

公平還意味著分享個(gè)人離職的基本原因，無論是因?yàn)樗麄冏趽u搖欲墜的企業(yè)里，還是因?yàn)樗麄冏约旱臉I(yè)績有問題?！澳┪惶蕴啤毕到y(tǒng)，即員工被迫按照從高到低的表現(xiàn)進(jìn)行排位，越來越不受歡迎。但至少在理論上，它們確實(shí)為在何處削減開支的決定提供了一個(gè)基于業(yè)績的衡量標(biāo)準(zhǔn)。據(jù)新聞網(wǎng)站The Information報(bào)道，谷歌將增加其認(rèn)定的低績效員工的比例。

If decision-making about who gets the chop appears capricious, then managers will also fail to achieve their second goal: to assure survivors that they don’t need to start looking for a new role, too. It matters that lay-offs do not become regular events. Research conducted at a large manufacturer in 2003 found that workers who had been exposed to repeated rounds of cuts felt less secure in their jobs and had greater intention to quit. In his memo in August, Evan Spiegel, Snap’s boss, made a point of saying that a 20% reduction in the social-media firm’s workforce should substantially reduce the risk of more axings.

如果誰被解雇的決策顯得反復(fù)無常，那么管理者也將無法實(shí)現(xiàn)他們的第二個(gè)目標(biāo):向幸存者保證，他們不需要也開始尋找新的職位。重要的是，裁員不要成為常態(tài)。2003年在一家大型制造企業(yè)進(jìn)行的研究發(fā)現(xiàn)，那些經(jīng)歷了多次裁員的員工對自己的工作缺乏安全感，更傾向于辭職。Snap的老板埃文?斯皮格爾在8月份的備忘錄中強(qiáng)調(diào)，該社交媒體公司裁員20%將大幅降低更多裁員的風(fēng)險(xiǎn)。

The third area of focus is workload. Cutting headcount and asking the survivors to do more might seem like a marvellous idea in head office. Some bosses say so outright: Elon Musk, chopper-in-chief at Twitter, is open about his belief in long hours by small teams. But it is a risky approach, as likely to reduce job satisfaction as yield leaps in productivity. Downsizing has a greater chance of succeeding if the burden on remaining employees does not spike.

第三個(gè)重點(diǎn)領(lǐng)域是工作量。在總部，裁員和要求幸存者做更多工作似乎是一個(gè)絕妙的主意。一些老板直截了當(dāng)?shù)剡@么說: Twitter首席“裁員”官埃隆?馬斯克公開表示，他相信小團(tuán)隊(duì)?wèi)?yīng)該長時(shí)間工作。但這是一種有風(fēng)險(xiǎn)的方法，可能會降低工作滿意度，同時(shí)帶來生產(chǎn)率的飛躍。如果剩余員工的負(fù)擔(dān)不增加，后續(xù)裁員成功的機(jī)會就更大。

None of this is easy territory. Lay-offs are bound to leave scars. But managing the fallout is simpler if the employees who are left behind still trust their bosses to get the big things right. Many of the memos being fired off by tech leaders contain apologetic admissions that they expanded their workforces too fast as a result of the pandemic. The honesty is necessary but it can plant another doubt in survivors’ minds: if they can foul up once, why not again?

這些都不是容易做到的。裁員必然會留下傷疤。但是，如果留下來的員工仍然相信他們的老板能把大事辦好，那么處理這些后果就會更簡單。科技公司領(lǐng)袖發(fā)出的許多備忘錄都包含歉意，承認(rèn)他們因疫情而過快擴(kuò)充了員工數(shù)量。誠實(shí)是必要的，但它會在幸存者的腦海中植入另一種懷疑: 如果他們可以搞砸一次，為什么不會再搞砸一次呢?