2022年经济学人 如何正确裁员（2）（在线收听）

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.

“公平”还意味着告知个人离职的理由，无论是因为他们所在的企业举步维艰，还是因为他们自己的表现值得怀疑。

“Stacked-ranking” systems, in which employees are forced into a ranking of highest to lowest performers, are increasingly out of favour.

按照表现高低对员工强制排名的“堆叠排名”制度，正越来越不受待见。

But in theory at least, they do provide a merit-based measure for decisions on where to make cuts.

但至少在理论上，这些制度确实提供了一种基于业绩的衡量标准，用于决定在哪些部门进行裁员。

According to The Information, a news site, Google is going to increase the proportion of employees it identifies as low performers.

据新闻网站The Information报道，谷歌将增加低绩效员工比例。

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.

如果在决定解雇谁时显得反复无常，那么管理者的第二个目标也实现不了，即向幸存员工保证他们不需要开始找下家。

It matters that lay-offs do not become regular events.

重要的是，不要定期裁员。

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.

2003年在一家大型制造企业进行的研究发现，经历了多次裁员的工人对自己的工作更缺乏安全感，也更想辞职。

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.

Snap的老板埃文·斯皮格尔在8月份的备忘录中明确表示，这家社交媒体公司裁员20%，会大大降低再次裁员的风险。

The third area of focus is workload.

第三个重点领域是工作量。

Cutting headcount and asking the survivors to do more might seem like a marvellous idea in head office.

裁员并要求幸存员工做更多工作，这在总部看来似乎是一个绝妙的主意。

Some bosses say so outright: Elon Musk, chopper-in-chief at Twitter, is open about his belief in long hours by small teams.

一些老板会直接这么说出来。推特的首席执行官埃隆·马斯克就公开表示，他相信小团队应该长时间工作。

But it is a risky approach, as likely to reduce job satisfaction as yield leaps in productivity.

但这种方法有风险，既可能提高生产率，也可能降低工作满意度。

Downsizing has a greater chance of succeeding if the burden on remaining employees does not spike.

留任员工的工作负担不激增的话，裁员会更有可能成功。

None of this is easy territory.

这一切都并非易事。

Lay-offs are bound to leave scars.

裁员必然会留下创伤。

But managing the fallout is simpler if the employees who are left behind still trust their bosses to get the big things right.

但是，如果留下的员工仍然相信老板会把大事做好，处理裁员后果就容易多了。

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.

科技公司领袖发布的许多备忘录都饱含歉意地承认，称受疫情的影响，他们的员工队伍扩张得太快了。

The honesty is necessary but it can plant another doubt in survivors’ minds: if they can foul up once, why not again?

这种诚实是有必要，但它也可能会在幸存员工的心中埋下另一个疑问：他们要是能搞砸一次，怎么就不会搞砸第二次呢？