A layoff is the temporary or permanent termination of an employee’s job for non-performance-related reasons. When an organization can no longer pay salaries or wages, when business declines, or when roles and responsibilities need to be reorganized, they decide to cut their staff through layoffs.
Recently, there are multiple layoffs by giant tech companies such as Google, Microsoft, Youtube and many more.
Based on the reasons for the layoffs, they may be either temporary or permanent.
The following are some typical causes of layoffs in an organization:
1. Financial challenges
Financial concerns mostly cause layoffs. A company that is having financial difficulties will inevitably turn to layoffs as a way to cut expenses and remain afloat. Layoffs are a common approach leadership uses to address financial challenges because wages account for a significant portion of corporate operations.
Financial challenges can arise from various circumstances, including but not limited to a decrease in sales, heightened competition, elevated operating expenses, and external economic downturns. Whatever the cause, every business chooses to lay off employees in order to maintain profitability under challenging circumstances and pay for overhead.
Organizations may implement temporary layoffs in response to short-term financial challenges or permanent layoffs if the issues persist.
The process of restructuring entails adjusting an organization’s organizational structure to boost productivity and guarantee that it is in line with mission goals. Restructuring includes establishing new roles and positions, removing existing ones, combining divisions, and substituting new procedures and functions for outdated ones. Organizational restructuring can be done for various reasons. Still, its primary goals are to save costs, boost efficiency, and simplify processes.
Employees are impacted by restructuring when it determines which functions and jobs may be removed or are no longer needed. In which case the firm may choose to lay off workers. Layoffs also follow reorganization that necessitates the merger of various divisions. Thus, one of the primary causes of layoffs in an organization is restructuring.
In order to increase sales and business, organizations typically migrate to be closer to their clients and consumers. Relocation is done, above all, to save operating costs. Relocation, for whatever reason, frequently results in job losses. An organization may have to fire employees who cannot relocate to the new official location when it moves to a new site that is too distant for some of its employees to travel there.
If there is a drop in the demand for goods or services, changes in the market may lead to organizational layoffs. An organization may need to cut costs in order to maintain profitability while revenues are down. It can accomplish this, for example, by terminating workers.
If the company anticipates the drop in demand will be transitory and intends to rehire staff when demand increases, layoffs may only be temporary. On the other hand, layoffs can be long-term if the demand reduction is predicted to be permanent.
An organization’s employees will probably lose their jobs if it closes down permanently. An organization will usually go through a process of winding down its activities and liquidating its assets when it decides to shut down. This might entail liquidating assets such as machinery and real estate. That organization will have to fire employees as part of this procedure.
