Responsibility In A Crisis

We’re all over the recession articles. And I’ve tried to avoid the doomsday-type articles predicting doom or gloom. The recession’s here. We all know it. And we understand what the consequences are. But I’d like to pause a sec from all this banter to tackle the problem of how businesses approach the issue of social responsibility and economic crisis.

To do this, I’m going to highlight an example. Recently, LinkMe let go of their Queensland state manager, and their general sales manager as well as a number of other sales staff. In the case of the former, this was after only three months after having been employed. This is not a solitary example. I’ve written previously of MyCareer’s heinous decision to move their Melbourne staff to the Sydney office. (MyCareer – Take It Or Leave It.)

From a purely economic perspective, it makes little sense to knee-jerk your way through the recession; cutting lifelines of employees in order to stay afloat. In all cycles, boom follows bust. When it comes to rehiring, the costs involved in getting a bunch of people onboard to a do a job you had people doing previously, makes no sense.

But if a business is going to run with profit and loss as its only indication of success, what it creates will leave only a dint on the world’s duco. And if those dints keep popping up, soon the world will begin to resemble a beat up old piece of junk at the scrap metal yard.

Here’s what I reckon’s going on. Companies talk quite a bit about being ethical. How many times have you inquired about the culture of a company and been told it’s “family-friendly” or “casual and relaxed”, only to discover that you are sneered at when you come to work an hour or so late because you went to your kid’s Father’s Day breakfast at school? Examples like the LinkedIn LinkMe one demonstrate that there is little awareness within companies of how their behaviour impacts on the lives of individuals. Surely it was foreseeable that, three months down the track, their services of a Queensland state manager would no longer be required. Surely. Who made the decision to hire them? It was irresponsible of LinkMe to hire someone under these conditions, knowing well enough that it would not be a long-standing proposition.

But perhaps something else is at play here. Perhaps a recession climate acts as an excuse for companies to let go of people en masse, with minimal outcry from the public. “In an economic downturn”, they tout, “we must do what is necessary to remain a viable business. This means cutting costs.” A good excuse, or reasonable economic sense?

You decide.