2022年经济学人 如何正确裁员（1）

（单词翻译）

Business

商业板块

Bartleby: How to do lay-offs right

巴托比：如何正确裁员

It means thinking primarily about the people who are left behind

要优先考虑那些留下的人

It’s not just Twitter.

不仅仅是推特。

The pink slips are piling up at some of the biggest names in tech.

一些科技巨头的解雇通知书也已经堆积如山。

Mark Zuckerberg, the founder¹ of Meta, is eliminating more than 11,000 roles, around 13% of the social-media company’s workforce².

Meta的创始人马克·扎克伯格将裁员超1.1万人，约占这家社交媒体公司员工总数的13%。

On November 22nd HP announced up to 6,000 job losses, which would be around 10% of the IT firm’s staff.

11月22日，惠普宣布裁员6000人，约占该信息技术公司员工总数的10%。

Amazon’s boss, Andy Jassy, has warned of more cuts next year, on top of those already unveiled in the retailer’s devices and books businesses.

亚马逊的老板安迪·贾西警告说，除了已经公布的设备和图书业务部门的裁员外，明年还会有更多的裁员。

Stripe revealed that 14% of the staff at the digital-payments firm were being let go.

Stripe透露，这家数字支付公司有14%的员工被解雇。

Snap and Shopify announced their own rounds of lay-offs earlier in the summer.

今年夏天早些时候，Snap和Shopify公布了几轮裁员计划。

Jobs are disappearing in other industries, too.

其他行业的就业机会也在消失。

Investment banks have started paring staff in anticipation³ of a slowdown in dealmaking.

投资银行已经开始裁员，以应对之后的交易放缓。

Property firms are laying people off as housing markets cool.

随着房地产市场降温，房地产公司也纷纷裁员。

Beyond Meat, which makes plant-based products, cut almost 20% of its workforce in October.

生产植物性产品的Beyond Meat在10月份裁员近20%。

The people who suffer most from lay-offs are those who lose their jobs.

受裁员影响最大的是那些失业的人。

But the colleagues who are left behind also endure lasting⁴ consequences; and for managers, this group is the one that determines success.

但留下的同事承受的余波也很持久；对于管理者来说，这些人是公司成功的决定性因素。

Some suffer a form of survivors⁵’ guilt⁶, asking themselves why they kept their jobs and colleagues did not.

一些人会陷入幸存者内疚，疑惑为什么自己保住了工作，而同事们却没有。

(Only at Twitter do the people leaving feel guilty about those who are left behind.)

(只有被推特裁掉的人才会对那些留下的感到内疚。)

Others must grapple with the practicalities of replacing departed workers and with the stress of heightened job insecurity: if the axe⁷ has fallen once, it may do so again.

其他人则必须努力应对接替离职员工的现实问题，以及工作更加不稳定所带来的压力：裁员的斧子能掉下来一次，就能掉下来第二次。

The results can be depressed⁸ morale⁹, lower productivity and unexpected costs.

这可能会导致士气低落、生产力下降，并带来意外成本。

Research conducted in 2008 by two academics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison found that, for an average company, downsizing the workforce by 1% was associated with a 31% increase in voluntary turnover¹⁰ rates.

威斯康星大学麦迪逊分校的两位学者在2008年进行的研究发现，对于一家普通公司来说，裁员1%会导致自愿离职率升高31%。

That means more disruption as well as additional money spent on filling open positions.

这意味着公司会受到更多干扰，还需要花更多资金来填补职位空缺。

To keep survivors motivated, managers need to get three things right.

为了保持幸存员工的积极性，管理者需要做好三件事。

The first imperative¹¹ is to appear fair.

首先就是要显得公平。

This is a capacious concept.

这是一个宽泛的概念。

Fairness involves treating departing colleagues well: one particular wrinkle with the current tech lay-offs is that they affect lots of immigrant workers, whose eligibility¹² to remain in America is now in doubt.

“公平”包括善待离职的同事：当前科技公司裁员的一个特殊问题是，裁员影响了大量移民工人，导致他们的留美资格存疑。

It means showing sensitivity about executive compensation: saying that downsizing is the hardest thing you’ve ever done is less credible¹³ when profit-related bonuses end up paying for another weekend house.

“公平”意味着要对高管薪酬表现出敏感：当利润相关的奖金最终用来购买另一栋周末度假屋时，“裁员是我做过的最困难的事情”这种说法就不那么可信了。