With the economy losing 1,300 jobs a week, according to IBEC’s Turlough O’Sullivan, the word redundancy - barely used in Irish business for the last six years - is now back in the boardroom and getting plenty of airing.
Many senior management teams are facing the real and dismal prospect of having to let some of their workforce go. Since about August last year, there have been whisperings about 10 people made redundant here, 30 there, the sorts of numbers that can slip under the radar. Now managers are looking at adding a zero to those figures. Dealing with that situation is a fairly daunting prospect and which few senior managers in their mid-thirties with Celtic Tiger careers, have any experience in.
And of course it’s not just a case of getting everyone into a room, telling them to pack their bags and turn the lights off on their way out. The EU Directive on Information and Consultation, which initially only applied to larger organisations, as of March 2008 applies to any organisation with more than 50 employees. The purpose of the Directive, is to give employees the right to be informed and consulted on matters which impact on their jobs or future work practices.
This can present a dilemma to employers who are also required to manage confidentiality of competitively sensitive company information. If the company is publicly quoted and Stock Exchange rules on informing shareholders come into the frame the stakes are higher still. How do you keep everyone happy?
The answer, of course, is that you don’t.
While the London Stock Exchange has publicly stated that informing shareholders at the same time as employees will meet their needs, that does not really make the job of breaking the news any easier from a logistics or a messaging point of view. But it’s what far-thinking management teams are preparing for, while still hoping that the long promised “soft landing” is around the corner.