Over the course of time, I’ve written a lot about layoffs, being laid off, and how no job is secure. But those are all symptoms of a deeper issue: companies have lost their way in managing their people. The very people, companies always say, that are the most important asset.

My focus, of course, is on the knowledge worker toiling away in the ubiquitous office cubicle. The one that is the most important resource but will be laid off by a company in a brutal minute.

But for this post, I’d like to focus on what management can do to avoid layoffs of those that are considered “the most important asset.”

How to avoid employee layoffs

The Cube Rules plan consists of two points:

1. 20% of each job title are contractors. This includes the management positions.
2. All employees are contractors first. You try before you buy for both the employer and the potential employee.

Implementation

All companies have an attrition rate that varies between five and fifteen percent a year. If your company has an attrition rate of 10%, you can implement this plan relatively well over two years. At that point in time, you will have a solid base of workers – who are temporary.

In addition, most companies have growth. You also get to the 20% of your workforce being on contract with new positions filled with contractors.

Once you are at your 20% level, you can hire new employees – from the contract worker base. This way you get an employee that is proven, already knows the company and the culture, and will move directly into the role with minimal transition time.

If you release contractors because business is not so good, you continue to rebuild to 20% contractors in your workforce base by working with attrition to fill the positions.

Benefits

Having 20% of your workforce be contract workers gives you a built in buffer to downturns in your business. Being on contract with a company is a completely different expectation on the part of the person under contract: contracts have ends. When a contract ends, it is a planned, expected ending.

Yet, given a downturn, you preserve the employee base. While letting contractors go would, of course, get the employees somewhat concerned, their concern is far different than if it were employees getting laid off.

In addition, by trying a person on contract before you hire, you are ensuring that the fit is right between the employer and the potential employee. This should give you a more productive employee because the risk of working in the environment is gone – they already are working in the environment.

This model also gives companies and employees a much better shot at true talent management. Employees have a greater commitment from management about their work because the threat of losing their job is lessoned. Employees are more likely to be engaged in their work because the distraction of the layoff is lessoned.

Conclusion

Corporate management of the workforce is broken. One cannot have a disconnect between engagement in the work and the continuous threat of layoff by corporate management. It hurts companies and the career management of employees.

There would be issues with implementation, of course. But I think it is time we start proposing different models of managing the workforce to corporate executives. What we have is clearly not working.

Cubicle Warriors, of course, can be hired resources if that is the direction companies are taking (and it is). But getting the employee back connected with the company mission would be better.

What would you think of 20% of your job titles as contract workers and being on contract before hired?

Scot

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Back when manufacturing ruled, crankable widgets were supreme. For example, in my summer vacation back in college, I worked at a paper factory. My job was pack boxes into cartons and put them on a line that went down to shipping.

I was cranking out widgets – twelve diapers to a box, twelve boxes to a carton, 750 cartons per eight-hour shift. That’s a lot of diapers and a lot of crankable widgets.

Now that we are knowledge workers, crankable widgets would seem to no longer exist. But they do. And Cubicle Warriors need to take advantage of them.

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To be fair, I’m not a Paris Hilton fan. Paris is a person who is famous for being famous and having the Hilton fortune, albeit a small percentage, behind her.

But give the girl credit. She has built her own personal brand – she’s with it, hot, doing the right things, seen in the right places, and being a celebrity because…well, we’ve said she is a celebrity.

But when your personal brand is under attack, you need to defend what is right about your brand. Don’t let someone else change your personal brand for their own devices.

And now I’m a Paris Hilton fan

When John McCain maliciously used Paris Hilton and Brittany Spears as part of an attack ad against Barack Obama, Paris had a problem: her personal brand was attacked without her permission and used in a way that degraded what she has built. Whether or not you agree with what she has built as a brand.

Instead of the “why would we want to be involved in a Presidential campaign” coming from Brittany’s PR handlers, we instead get an on-message personal branding defense from Paris Hilton. Not only is it a perfect defense of her brand, but it uses her celebrity to turn the tables on the McCain campaign. Celebrity has privileges and Paris knows exactly how to use them.

Her defense perfectly integrates her personal brand and mocks those that would try and debase it. And, by the way, so did her parents who also previously donated dollars to the McCain campaign.

If your personal brand is attacked, defend the realm with your personal brand in mind. You may not be able to pull off the resources that Paris did, but her response is spot on.

Scot

How different have the company cultures been at the places you have worked? Have you noticed?

Some companies are run by the engineers, another by developers, another by management. Some seek consensus among all parties in a decision while others have decisions dictated to them.

While we all talk about our job skills, performance and looking for opportunity as a framework for our career, there is another lurking factor in our success or failure in our job.

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When sitting down to seriously think about your next career move, what’s the most standard career management advice you’ll see?

From everything I’ve been looking at, the advice is: Know what you want to be doing ten years from now.

That’s not good advice.

Sure, you can say that you want to be two levels above where you are now. Or working for a particular company. Or even being in a new career.

But life has a habit of laughing at your plans. If you don’t believe me, simply go back to 2003.

2003

Where were you in 2003 and what were you doing? What position? What company? What career? What city? Your relationships?

Then look at where you are today. What position are you in? What company? What career? What city?

2003 and today. How much of today was planned? How much of that happened because you knew your strengths and were open to opportunities being presented to you? Or was an accident born of necessity?

I would have told them they were nuts

Here’s the question I always ask myself: If someone in 2003 would have told me that my career would have gone from “X” then to “Y” today I would have told them (fill in blank).

Most of the time I would have told them they were nuts. But here I am.

If I look back five years ago from where I am today, there is simply no way I could have predicted or planned what I am doing. One or two things here and there, of course. But nothing close to a career plan. Nothing close to “knowing what I want to do in ten years.”

Open to opportunity

The key advice for career management is to continue to refine your job skills, continue to build accomplishments in your current position, and be aware of opportunities for change.

Predicting ten years into the future is a tough business. Better to know your skills and accomplishments so you can grab the next big thing that is right for you.

Scot

I’m not so sure this is the right thing for career management, but the cubes are pretty interesting.

My favorite: The cube done in mahogany. So 1920…

Scot