In my work in the EHS arena, I have noticed that a given company’s focus on safety is usually intensified (sometimes initiated in the first place) after the organization has the proverbial “bad run” of accidents. In the same way, basic questions of organization structure become more prominent when business is down. When a business is doing “OK”, it may be able to afford some inefficiency, but during a bad run of business, where the bottom line is impacted, waste and errors suddenly become a visible priority, and must be addressed.
Many organizations are indeed doing a much smaller volume of business than they were before the bottom fell out of the economy in late 2008. Such organizations usually can’t afford to keep the same size workforce as before. So how do they shrink in a strategic way? How should the work that remains to be done be allocated? How can we ensure that the employees we keep are the right ones, and remain motivated and engaged — even if they must do work outside their previous job description, and in the absence of laid-off coworkers and friends?