The Headcount Solution : How to Cut Compensation Costs and Keep Your Best People [Hardcover]

N. Frederic Crandall (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 16, 2002

Most organizations find themselves faced with the difficult task of downsizing at some point in their life cycle. The Headcount Solution is the only book that offers managers both alternatives to downsizing and the practical steps necessary to carry out layoffs with fairness and compassion. Including best practices from major public and private corporations, this practical guide offers effective cost-cutting measures and explains how to rebuild employee morale and motivation after a downsizing. This groundbreaking book introduces you to a new kind of management thinking that will allow your company to reduce costs but also sustain a competitive advantage, now and in the future.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

At some point in their life cycle, most organizations will face a business crisis that requires drastic cost reduction, which often leads to downsizing. Often, company leaders believe that layoffs are the fastest way to shore up their bottom lines. But the way downsizing is typically carried out ignores the high costs associated with losing human capital--people who have critical business knowledge that is not easily replaced. In the desperate rush to cut costs, companies often dismiss the very employees who could have helped the business recover.

The Headcount Solution is the only book that offers managers both effective, cost-cutting alternatives to downsizing and the practical steps necessary to carry out unavoidable layoffs with fairness and compassion. Drawing on their years of experience helping clients restructure their businesses in times of crisis, N. Fredric Crandall and Marc J. Wallace Jr. explain the basic steps you must take to preserve your people and their skills, competencies, and leadership capabilities in order to put your company back on an even footing with the competition.

Reducing the number of "heads" in a company may meet short-term objectives but could drastically shortchange your organization in the long run. This groundbreaking book introduces you to a new kind of management thinking that will allow your company to avoid widespread layoffs and sustain a competitive advantage, now and in the future. You'll learn successful methods for retaining vital employees and keeping them productive--at a reduced level of involvement and compensation.

The Headcount Solution outlines seven critical steps that will leave your organization with a solid foundation for recovery:

• Prepare your organization

• Decide who to cut and who to keep

• Implement across-the-board cost cuts

• Implement alternative work arrangements

• Conduct layoffs as a last resort

• Help the survivors get back to work

You'll also discover how to avoid major downsizing mistakes and trim only the staff whose critical competencies are not vital to maintaining your organization's mission. The authors provide hard-won lessons for downsizing, including best practices from major corporations such as Microsoft and Motorola. You'll learn how to act boldly, quickly, and decisively when the time comes, prevent fear and isolation from taking over--a sad but common executive response--and rebuild employee morale and motivation. The Headcount Solution offers a simple, straightforward way to cut costs and keep your best people in order to survive a downturn and regain profitability.

Take your company from crisis to recovery--without losing your best people

For even the toughest executive, downsizing or restructuring a business is a sobering, difficult experience. No company can survive this type of crisis without holding on to its best people--the ones with industry-specific legal, manufacturing, or marketing expertise. However, when a business crisis forces layoffs, there is a sizeable risk that the wrong people will be let go. It's crucial to your company's future to make sure this doesn't happen.

The Headcount Solution explains how companies can effectively cut costs while retaining the best people. N. Fredric Crandall and Marc Wallace Jr. demonstrate how to first exhaust all the options available to help you avoid downsizing. Then the authors provide a step-by-step process to swiftly--and with minimal disruption--implement layoffs, rebuild your company and prepare for the competitive battles of the future. Using best practices from major corporations such as Microsoft and Motorola, the authors also explain how your company can avoid major downsizing mistakes--such as demoralizing the survivors and replacing innovation and growth with fear. The Headcount Solution will help your organization get ahead, and prepare your staff for the hard yet hopeful times ahead.

About the Author

N. Fredric Crandall, PhD, and Marc J. Wallace Jr., PhD, are founding partners of the Center for Workforce Effectiveness based in Northbrook, Illinois. Dr. Crandall is a frequent speaker to such groups as the American Management Association and World at Work. He is the author of Work and Rewards in the Virtual Workplace. Dr. Wallace has consulted across numerous industries and his research findings have been published in over sixty articles. He has coauthored nine books on management and human resources that have been used by over one million students.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill; 1 edition (December 16, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0071402993
• ISBN-13: 978-0071402996
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,595,351 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Book for the Times, March 6, 2003

By 

Roger E. Herman (Greensboro, NC USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Headcount Solution : How to Cut Compensation Costs and Keep Your Best People (Hardcover)

Employers of all sizes and types are struggling in today's tight economy. For the past few years, payrolls have been substantially reduced as companies sought every way possible to operate lean. The economic downturn has inspired leaders to restructure their organizations, saying good-bye to long-term employees who no longer fit while, at the same time, bringing in fresh workers with the skills needed for the new corporate design.

The challenge through all this turmoil is to retain your top talent and control costs. That combination is difficult to achieve, since highly proficient employees also expect to be highly compensated. This dilemma has been front-burner for the past few years. Will it continue to be an issue as we move through the decade in a growing economy? My perspective is yes: companies will continue restructuring and the entire employment environment will be very fluid. The balancing act of keeping people and managing compensation will be a vital skill for successful business leaders.

The book begins with a recognition that layoffs, easy as they may be as a simple solution, may not always be the best answer. Chapter 1 opens with Key Principles, a good positioning that continues as a pattern through the book. Downsizing is explained in short sections in a style that reminds me of USA Today-short, pithy statements. The practicality of the book jumps out with numbered how-to steps to follow. You won't find a lot of depth here, but rather pragmatic thought stimulators. This book will be most valuable for people with experience and/or knowledge in human resource management practices.

The second chapter reports on what companies are doing to cut costs and keep people. The chapter reports on the responses of 1,245 companies to a 2001 survey. Results are reported, followed by the sort of summary that appears at the end of each chapter. The first section concludes with a chapter on how leadership can maintain morale during the kind of crisis that inspires downsizing.

Part Two moves from dilemma to solution, providing seven steps to cut compensation costs. Readers will find an easy-to-read format (plenty of space between lines-airy). A wealth of ideas is shared in these pages as you move from preparation to planning to implementation, to getting back to business.

Then comes the frosting on the cake: five appendices, a glossary, and a good index. Two sample employment termination agreements are offered, one for individual workers 40 and older and another for more than one worker over 40. We're into the legal cover-your-anatomy stuff here. The other three appendices are quite unusual. They're sample speeches for corporate leaders to use in announcing rounds 1, 2, and 3 of cost cutting. I wondered about this feature, thinking that this must be Cost Cutting for Real Dummies.
There is some value in the sample speeches as readers will gain some insight into the issues that need to be covered. However, leaders should be encouraged to use their own phraseology and creativity so their own personality comes through to their people.

As lead author of "Impending Crisis: Too Many Jobs, Too Few People," I believe that we will soon move into an era of increasing headcounts, we're not quite there yet. So this book has instant value today, and will have philosophical and procedural value into the future.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Tremendously useful, February 20, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: The Headcount Solution : How to Cut Compensation Costs and Keep Your Best People (Hardcover)

The book provides some great ideas that are important to anyone trying to get the most out of their payroll dollars. As CFO of a public company that has gone through a world of change over the past few years, the advice and insight provided in the Headcount Solution are right on the mark. I wish I read it earlier! I know the book will provide a great foundation as we go forward. I highly recommend it.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Proven, practical solutions to a difficult issue, February 17, 2003

By 

Dwain Beydler (Memphis, TN) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Headcount Solution : How to Cut Compensation Costs and Keep Your Best People (Hardcover)

Dr. Crandall provides a straight forward, practical approach for executives and HR professionals to use to keep their company's most important competitive advantage, their best people. This practical, seven step process provides a proven method for companies to use, during any phase of the business cycle. But it is especially timely now during an economic period when retaining your best performers is the best way to ensure your company's future success.