I had the misfortune to listen to a friend describe the process by which people are made redundant in organisations these days. Rather than just pin the redundancy tail on the poor donkey who will be the recipient of the job loss (hand them a cheque and say “sorry, it didn’t work out”), these HR idiots first decide that two people are in the frame for the the loss, and then subject them to a process whereby they have to compete for their job – the job being called the ‘Competitive Slot’. This process takes up to 3-4 months, during which the poor people are made to perform like cage fighters with each other, trying to out-do the other and be the ‘winner’.


This is all done to make the process seem fair and consultative, and I daresay, to make it appear that everything has been done to protect the company from litigation should someone decide that they have been badly treated. The poor sods, they don’t know the half of it. Lets consider the flip side. Imagine, you have been put into a competitive slot, in say, September, and you’ll know the outcome at some point in December, and that your performance will be judged and weighed and balanced in that time. Are you going to :

a) work out that it is both of you that they want to get rid of, so they can bring in someone new?
b) go home, and tell your wife and family that you have the possibility of losing your job around christmas time?
c) get depressed, drunk and give up
d) watch ‘Falling Down’ over and over again
e) all of the above…

Well, yes – ‘e’.

But above all, you are going to be very stressed. You are going to go through at least 5 circles of hell, have numerous sleepless nights, take it out on your wife and kids – and possibly your colleagues, generally be wary of interacting with the very people who have already and will continue to judge your performance, and generally be perceived as a bit of a dead man walking. After all, you were put into a competitive slot, so there must be something wrong, right? But suppose you win? Will you ever be able to trust ‘the company’ again for putting you through that? I’m looking at this and thinking that there is a big negative in staff morale that no one seems to weigh up here.

I believe, and yes, it is a bit cynical of me, that this sort of nonsense is HR making work for themselves, to justify their own pitiful existence. They create the stress and then deal with the consequences – is it all a big job creation scheme for them? Or is it another manifestation of the crass insensitivity displayed by the newly machismo’d up department called HR that we all used to know as ‘Personnel’ and ignore by and large. When did they get so bloody important that they are allowed to play with people’s lives when their qualifications are probably no better than the average estate agent?

The disturbing upshot of this is that the possible outcome of the competitive slot business could be one of the competitors deciding that the garage rafter and a noose is his only way out. Whither HR then? Culpable?