`Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look.”
Remember when Julius Caesar said that to Brutus in William Shakespeare’s play, “Julius Caesar”?
And you know what happened soon thereafter: Caesar got the knife.
Unfortunately, “a lean and hungry look” is what many workers also are observing in the eyes of their employers, who don’t authorize the use of a knife, only an ax, to thin their ranks. Employees fear that look: It’s the same one that means their bosses are plotting layoffs, downsizings and firings.
Most workers know there could be trouble ahead, especially when it comes to the security of their employment. And even though Shakespeare also told us in “MacBeth” that “security is mortal’s chiefest enemy,” I know that time after time, especially after Sept. 11, workers are right to feel queasy: Their jobs are in danger.
But even though many U.S. companies automatically turn to staff reduction as a way to increase profits, blindly firing everyone in sight may not always be the smartest move to make, one expert says.
“When it comes to building a top-notch workforce, an overdose of `lean and mean’ can be a prescription for mediocrity,” said Mary Lou Schallman, a partner at Cambria Consulting, Inc., a human resources consulting firm in Boston.
Schallman, who has a doctorate in industrial and organization psychology, helps companies develop strategies to attract the best job prospects.
“In response to the slow economy, corporations are cutting their staffs as lean as possible–ignoring the fact that the talent pool is richer than it’s been in years,” she observed.
Schallman cautions employers that “by the time they’re ready to hire, the best talent will be gone.”
As someone who’s often on the receiving end of frantic, even desperate, communications from people who have lost their jobs, I like Schallman’s approach: Instead of firing, she suggests that companies should be hiring new talent in order to “beat their competition to the best prospects.”
And there sure are a lot of them available.
Since it’s so much easier for short-sighted employers to disembowel their staffs rather than to recruit new and promising workers, I doubt that many of them have massive hiring plans on the table.
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And that’s why, just in case a sudden wave of new jobs does not hit the U.S. labor market, I’ve devised some important tips to help employees, if at all possible, to keep their current jobs–in other words, to avoid being one of those butchered as a result of corporate “lean and hungry” looks.
Here’s what to do:
– Fatten your position by taking on extra work, especially any task that your manager may find overwhelming.
– Reduce your chances of being singled out for the slaughterhouse by doing the best job you can, always being on time, always being dependable–and always letting your manager know all the good things that you are doing.
– Make no bones about the fact that the company has no other employee as loyal as you are.
– Make sure your manager knows you’re a cut above the rest when it comes to performance.
– Start sending out your resume. You, too, Brutus.
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Carol Kleiman’s column also appears in Tuesday’s Business and Wednesday’s Working sections. Watch her Career Coach segments on CLTV. Send e-mail to [email protected].