Negar RiazatiChief Executive Officer (CEO) Australia & Asia Region at Performia Australia

Team restructuring, how do you approach it? Suggestions for companies who need to downsize

31 Mar 2020 · 1 min

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1:28

In this brief dialogue, Speaker B advises companies facing the need to let employees go. They emphasize that layoffs are heavily regulated, noting that long‑tenured staff often have greater legal protection than newer hires. Rather than using seniority as the sole criterion, the recommendation is to assess current contribution and value, retaining hard‑working, high‑performing individuals. Speaker B also stresses that employees who are not contributing or are unwilling to work hard should be removed, especially in a constrained environment where the organization cannot afford underperformers. The overall guidance balances legal compliance with a performance‑focused approach to restructuring.

Do you have some suggestions on steps companies can take if they find themselves in a situation where they've got to let people go?
This is an area which is very regulated, you know, like you cannot fire whoever you want. Those who have worked there for a long time, they will be more protected than those people who arrived late. You can fire them first, but that doesn't necessarily correspond to who is helping the company most at this moment. So the normal answer would be that, you know, you really, really look at people's contribution right now and you make sure to keep those people who are hardworking, who delivers, you know, high value.
Mm-hmm.
If someone is not contributing and is not willing to work hard, especially in a situation like we are now, they should ideally not be on your team. Right now we have a situation where we cannot really afford to have people who are lazy and think that, oh, someone else is going to fix it, someone else can handle the situation. We can't really afford those guys. You can never afford them, but right now it becomes very obvious that we cannot afford them.
Yep.