Unintended Consequences

With the downsizings going on right now in the workplace, there are critical dynamics in place for careers, companies, and futures.

When an organization starts to downsize, there are a number of perhaps unintended consequences that occur.

Individuals feel less safe, focus on survival and greatly reduce their “risky decisions,” which in turn suffocates progress and new ideas coming to light.

The psychology of not having control over one’s future can bring apathy into the environment.

Depending on what period of their career they are in, top talent will start to look outside the organization as they may not want to wait around a few years for cutting-edge opportunities and new programs to be brought online.

People tend to manage careers up and across instead of focusing on doing their job at hand.

The Matthew Principle comes into play. To those who have more, more will come to them. And to those who have less, more will be taken.

Price’s Law, the square root of the total number of employees who do 50% of the work. Starting to have them go out the door can generationally impact an organization.

Attracting top 5% of talent to organizations that are making cuts at large is incredibly difficult during the time of the cuts and up to 2 years afterward.

Unintended consequences.