It's great advice but may as well have been written in hieroglyphics, personally I've never seen it taken (three rounds across two companies + missed payroll during bankruptcy once).
I posit that the reason for this, in tech anyway, is that employees are generally in one of two categories: 1) Sales people with customer connections or 2) Developer/admin types who may have a lot of access to systems. In either of these cases the employer could be concerned that the possibly-terminated employee is going to damage the assets (contacts or code) that the company has.
If I could contribute a pattern from my limited experience it would be this: Companies tend to hire a hatchet-man a few months before layoffs start. It often looks like an incompetent manager "decided to spend more time with his family", or the creation of a new, often highly paid, middle manager position. After the new guy is in his place he lays off the people that he's {decided, been instructed} to, and then moves on, often because he's burnt out from doing all of the dirt work that the managers above him are too weak to do.
In both companies the person who was hired as a hatchet man would have been a far better manager than the one who sailed the ship into the iceberg in the first place. If as an employer you don't see your manager as capable of doing this hard job (layoffs), how do you expect them to do the hard day to day job of managing performance? Just keeping the house clean can save that first round of layoffs that often consists of the low performers, and without the horrible morale crush of pink slips.
I posit that the reason for this, in tech anyway, is that employees are generally in one of two categories: 1) Sales people with customer connections or 2) Developer/admin types who may have a lot of access to systems. In either of these cases the employer could be concerned that the possibly-terminated employee is going to damage the assets (contacts or code) that the company has.
If I could contribute a pattern from my limited experience it would be this: Companies tend to hire a hatchet-man a few months before layoffs start. It often looks like an incompetent manager "decided to spend more time with his family", or the creation of a new, often highly paid, middle manager position. After the new guy is in his place he lays off the people that he's {decided, been instructed} to, and then moves on, often because he's burnt out from doing all of the dirt work that the managers above him are too weak to do.
In both companies the person who was hired as a hatchet man would have been a far better manager than the one who sailed the ship into the iceberg in the first place. If as an employer you don't see your manager as capable of doing this hard job (layoffs), how do you expect them to do the hard day to day job of managing performance? Just keeping the house clean can save that first round of layoffs that often consists of the low performers, and without the horrible morale crush of pink slips.