How Your Company Can Avoid Layoffs

Not every recession-squeezed business needs to lay off employees. But the alternative, becoming a proud and proclaimed "no-layoff company," requires sacrifices that are shared by employer and employee.

Some firms are already making it work.

Take Hypertherm, in Dover New Hampshire. The company, which makes industrial strength cutting tools, has seen its business fall 50 percent. There have been no layoffs. But there have been personnel changes.

According to an account on NPR, employees not needed on the front lines are reassigned to other duties, which may even include grounds maintenance. The company is trying to move all its work in-house and staff it with current employees who otherwise might be out of a job. The goal is to hold on to as many people as it can for when business picks up again.

This can be a great strategy for companies that rely on highly skilled workers, such as Hypertherm. It would be even more costly and years in the making to have to hire replacements and train them to be as productive.

But even employers of lower-skilled workers can benefit by this approach. The Nugget Markets grocery chain, which boasts of never having a layoff in its 82 years, cross-trains to provide more work force flexibility. The benefit? If a deli worker's hours fall, she can make it up by training as a bagger, a job she performs at the higher deli pay scale.

There are other ways, of course, to avoid the ax. Many firms ask for volunteers to take extended vacations, a sabbatical, leaves of absence, or a shorter work week. Salary freezes and cuts are common as well. But these approaches still shift much of the burden to the employee. The best solution is when employer and employee can share the pain to, eventually, share the gain.

Jordan Siegel, an associate professor at the Harvard Business School, says he has seen this shared-pain model used in South Korea, but not much in the U.S. "There has been this shared sacrifice, people sharing some reductions in compensation, in order to avoid layoffs," he tells NPR.

Has your company taken innovative steps to retain employees?