Hiring and Firing

                     During the last 3 months, I experienced certain events in office which I had never experienced in my last 8.5 years of corporate life.
Events ignited varied emotions and forced me to think more about whats right and whats wrong.

Our company fired around 220 employees in a span of 3 months in 2 batches.

We never faced such situation and were totally unsure how to react.
It led me to think about different aspects of this event and to question whether company is at fault or not.

At the onset, we all blamed the company for taking this decision. There were bad reviews posted on glassdoor after the event and everyone blaming the company for following hire and fire policy.

There were questions raised like:

• Company didn't meet target revenue for 1 quarter. Is this the right decision to react on 1 quarter failure?
• Company had an aggressive hiring in first half of the year. Was the planning not proper.
• Company invested in multiple innovations and which failed to deliver. Was market study not done before investment ? Or was it the sales department who failed to get this to market ?
•  Company invested in projects where focus was on quality, so was the repercussions of such a project not estimated in terms of volume/revenue ?
• Company never had restricted expenses in past and cost approvals for parties and travel was very easy to get.

However as they say, "time is the best healer". As time passed by , remaining 300 people started to forget the event and move on. Some were still recovering and some moved on already.

Higher management  had justifications for everything and one cannot question them really.

During this course of healing, many thoughts and questions came in my mind like :- 

• Should company be liable to provide job stability to employees, what exactly is job stability or job security ? 
• Company is formed with sole purpose of making money and the owners of the company have all rights to take decisions no matter how brazen they may seem.
• Employees are hired to do a day's work and they are paid for that day's work.
• There are certain expectations from employee and employee is paid at the end of month for his job of fulfilling those expectations.

I realized that employees feel bad because of emotional attachment to the company. He expects more than just the salary from company. In process of giving 100% to job expectations, he sometimes thinks that he is working for his own company.

Another aspect of this is that employee feels insulted on getting fired. This is very normal human behavior as no one likes the rejection. The feeling that one's contribution is no longer required is scary.

Also employee finds himself in too much comfort zone, that such an event feels like a bolt from the blue.
All of a sudden, he has to find a job . He has to face interviews.
And the most daunting task is to face society, family and peers.

So what is the solution?  Who is right and who is wrong ? 

In my opinion it is never easy to face such situation.  However there are some best practices which can just make one stronger to face such situations.

One should consider his job just as a job and should know that he is paid for the services is offering.
One should understand that this is not permanent and no one is liable to pay him for eternity.

If one is confident of his talent, he will be least affected. Today, a company is paying you for your services and if you are good enough some other company will need you and hire you at same cost or higher.

So the onus is on the employee to be professional and a continuous learner which will help him face such situation with more courage and confidence.