Consulting firms cash in on retrenchments

Bengaluru: Snapdeal handed out pink slips to hundreds of its employees last month, the Chinese business conglomerate LeEco fired nearly 80 per cent of its staff in India and a Chennai-based online hotel aggregator Stayzilla temporarily shut its operations down. As a result of internal or external triggers, organisations have been opting for strategic rightsizing measures.

Ankush Puri, the business head of a talent management company, Lee Hetch Harrison (LHH) says that his company was approached by over 200 organisations that plan for right-sizing every year.

“In a majority of the cases, startups are compelled to sack employees due to magnitude of business fluctuations, while the established firms consolidate talent and sack their staff due to merger or takeover. A change in strategy or optimising productivity also, in some cases, could result in massive layoffs,” Mr Puri explained.  

However, he feels that organisations have become more responsible of late because technology has made the world a smaller place and organisations realise that talent market has its own way of evaluating employers.

“To ensure minimum undesired talent loss, companies start consulting LHH as soon as they realize they have to go in for right sizing. This could be a month in advance or sometimes, it could be as late as a couple of days before sacking the employees,” said Mr Puri.

 After notifying the staff about the layoffs, many companies hire a certified coach to allay the anxiety of the fired employees.

In such a scenario, Mr. Puri says that it is imperative for employees to ensure that their career is not derailed in the long run. Due to economic and social pressures, many employees rush to get a new job. However, they face the repercussions of their hasty job choices after six to months to one year.  

“Our endeavour is to ensure that the employee makes the right choice, while being sensitive to the social and economic pressures that a fired employee may face,” Mr Puri said.