Comments on: Death By a Thousand Job Cuts http://workforce.com/wpmu/globalwork/2008/04/04/death_of_1000_job_cuts/ A journey through workforce issues in the world's fastest growing economy. Mon, 8 Sep 2008 16:22:46 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=wordpress-mu-1.2.3-2.2.1 By: Heidi O'Gorman http://workforce.com/wpmu/globalwork/2008/04/04/death_of_1000_job_cuts/#comment-2366 Heidi O'Gorman Tue, 08 Apr 2008 19:34:09 +0000 http://workforce.com/wpmu/globalwork/2008/04/04/death_of_1000_job_cuts/#comment-2366 Agree with the points you make 110%. We are about to run an article in our client newsletter that looks back to the recession of 2001 and what happened to companies who made decisions to either invest in their employees -- or divest in them. One of the most interesting data points concerns Apple, which invested heavily in talent in the years leading up to 2001 and decided to not lay people off. A couple of years later, Apple came out with the IPod, which may have saved the company. There is a great interview with Steve Jobs in the March issue of Fortune [Link to http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2008/fortune/0803/gallery.jobsqna.fortune/15.html]. In it,Steve Jobs looks back in time and explains, “What I told our company was that we were just going to invest our way through the downturn, that we weren't going to lay off people, that we'd taken a tremendous amount of effort to get them into Apple in the first place -- the last thing we were going to do is lay them off. And we were going to keep funding. In fact we were going to up our R&D budget so that we would be ahead of our competitors when the downturn was over. And that's exactly what we did. And it worked. And that's exactly what we'll do this time." That is the path companies need to follow this time around too if they want to come out ahead when the economy recovers. Agree with the points you make 110%. We are about to run an article in our client newsletter that looks back to the recession of 2001 and what happened to companies who made decisions to either invest in their employees — or divest in them.

One of the most interesting data points concerns Apple, which invested heavily in talent in the years leading up to 2001 and decided to not lay people off. A couple of years later, Apple came out with the IPod, which may have saved the company. There is a great interview with Steve Jobs in the March issue of Fortune [Link to http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2008/fortune/0803/gallery.jobsqna.fortune/15.html]. In it,Steve Jobs looks back in time and explains, “What I told our company was that we were just going to invest our way through the downturn, that we weren’t going to lay off people, that we’d taken a tremendous amount of effort to get them into Apple in the first place — the last thing we were going to do is lay them off. And we were going to keep funding. In fact we were going to up our R&D budget so that we would be ahead of our competitors when the downturn was over. And that’s exactly what we did. And it worked. And that’s exactly what we’ll do this time.”

That is the path companies need to follow this time around too if they want to come out ahead when the economy recovers.

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