Cost Cuts, Hiring Freezes, and Layoffs: Is Your Company at Risk?

The downsizing strategy is once again trending among businesses big and small because of economic instability. Recent weeks have seen tech industry giants like Meta, Apple, and Shopify make headlines for massive layoffs and hiring freezes.

Unprecedented layoffs aren’t new to the global business arena with the recent pandemic. Job creation in early 2022 from the high growth years seems to have fixed this, but companies are now pulling back.

Are widespread layoffs coming? Truth is, 63% of small businesses have already paused hiring and cut jobs in September in anticipation of a recession. 

With a ripple effect threatening to ensue from massive layoffs, businesses will continue to find ways to trim costs and manage losses. Putting a pause on hiring and letting talent go tends to be the go-to strategy to preserve cash flows.

How Do Massive Layoffs Affect Your Business?

Downsizing in other companies could lead to a ripple effect that doesn’t exclude yours. Supply-chain disruptions are here, and big tech layoffs could also mean less productivity and lower response times with your company apps.

Overall, the ripple effect of layoffs and hiring pauses can affect your company’s speed-to-market and revenue growth. Besides hopping on the bandwagon and downsizing instead of continuing to grow your market share by developing your current workforce, what other strategies can you implement to mitigate the effects of hiring freezes?

3 Ways to Manage the Effect of Widespread Layoffs and Hiring Freezes

Here are three strategies you can use to mitigate the effects of big tech layoffs and widespread hiring freezes on your company.

1. Staff Redeployment

Widespread layoffs could mean that some parts of your business will be busier while others will have more free time. Redesigning your current staff’s roles can help you manage your cash flows without having to cut corners. 

Instead of letting go of talented people you know your business needs, you can have them adjust their current functions and help out with busier areas of operation. Your in-house recruiter could perhaps help out in sales or marketing. Customer service may also need an extra hand to deal with complaints from supply-chain disruptions.

Staff redeployment means banking on your team’s transferable skills and equipping them with new knowledge to help the business stay afloat in the midst of an economic downturn. What you’ll end up with is a stronger workforce that can easily adapt to changes should they come again in the near future.

2. Provide Consistent Support

Internal support will be needed in your business as work becomes more demanding for some team members. Staff redeployment is one way to help resolve this issue. Should there be more demand than everyone can help out with, you can outsource some of the tasks to a part-time virtual assistant.

Outsourcing to offshore virtual assistants is a cost-effective solution used by many companies even without the influence of an economic downturn. The benefit of labor arbitrage from offshore outsourcing has helped Fortune 500 companies scale in the past.

With a virtual assistant (VA), you can mitigate the financial impact of hiring new local staff, while getting the help you and your team needs.

Support will also be required by your clients, meaning more work for your customer support reps. In this case, getting the help of a customer support virtual assistant can do a lot for your business. 

With an offshore customer service VA, you can even leverage the time difference to provide after-hours support for both your team and your customers. This is a strategy eCommerce giant Shopify has already started.

3. Have an Automation Specialist

Business automation has helped a lot of businesses before and throughout the pandemic. Automating tasks helped teams free up time to tackle more pressing issues that the pandemic brought on.

As such, assigning someone in your team to be an automation specialist can help a lot in mitigating the impact of widespread layoffs on your business. This way, you can avoid the cost of adding new employees to your payroll, and also take some pressure off your team by delegating some of their tasks to technology.

If you already have a virtual assistant, check in with them to see if they have knowledge on how to automate email campaigns, project management platforms, dialers, and other tools in your business. You can have your VA help out everyone in your team optimize their workflow and find work-life balance.

Most virtual assistants tend to be highly flexible and equipped with multiple unique skills, like Virtudesk’s Executive Virtual Assistants, and can help you with your day-to-day tasks, as well as when new urgent tasks or projects come up.

Bottom Line

A trend of downsizing in other companies doesn’t mean you also have to stop growing your business. With the help of the team you already have, you can manage to keep your business afloat and come out stronger when the economy becomes more stable.

Looking for other opportunities to generate revenue can take a bit more time, but that’s also a strategy you can pursue with your team or a virtual assistant. Shifting your organization’s focus with internal adjustments instead will develop your entire company into a better team than it was before the pandemic.

Before letting go of the talent you strategically hired and began investing in, look into how you can better leverage the talent pool you’ve relied on to grow your business.

If you can’t avoid getting extra help, starting with Virtudesk Lite is a cost-effective solution that can turn into a long-term business growth strategy. Should you need the help of virtual assistants, fill out this form and one of our consultants will get in touch with you.

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