I caught up with someone I hadn’t seen in ages the other day. He runs an office refurbishment/ relocation company and realised earlier this year thatwith the downturn in business he was going to have to let some staff go if the company was to survive.

He said it was one of the hardest decisions he’d ever made as some of those people had been with him for years. He carried out the redundancies swiftly and cleanly.

Then he got the remaining workforce together and said that was it: There would be no more redundancies. Those that had been made were enough to safeguard the firm and their jobs and ride out the recession.

Everyone was expected to pitch in and cover the workload.  No additional staff would be taken on to cope with any blip of an upturn only for him to go through this again. However, any surplus profit, over and above money needed to ensure stability would be shared amongst everybody.

Since then he’s had real team camaraderie, the atmosphere is the best it’s ever been and everyone is committed to the survival and success of the company.

Not nice for the few who were made redundant but a HUGE sigh of relief for the majority that remain.

Sometimes it’s tough at the top. Effective leaders have to be prepared to take painful decisions and follow them through.

What do YOU think?