So you think you’re smart??BEWARE!!

“To win in the market place, you must first win in the work place”

-Doug Conant, CEO of Campbell’s Soup

“Always treat your employees exactly as you want them to treat your best customers”

-Stephen R Covey

Wohoo!! Now, that’s a lot about employees. But does the management actually consider them to be the assets? What are they doing instead? –DOWNSIZING! The management uses this tool to reduce their employee strength to reduce the costs, in particular to lay off inefficient workers.

So, here comes the ‘Baap of Downsizing’ – BRIGHTSIZING. Undoubtedly, a new buzz word!!This is the practice of eliminating the brightest employee in the organization.

Why bright size?

According to the HR policies and framework of certain companies, the priority will be given to the senior most employees compared to the equally qualified candidates. Young, bright employees are eliminated to maintain the smooth functioning of the organization. Although the blame is on the companies with strong union, it equally exists in the non-union companies.

The mismatch between the holistic values of an individual and the company could also be the reason for elimination.   

 In my opinion, bright sizing has both pros and cons. It might be the policy or the culture of the company to promote dignity and have employees of the same value system. Training and tuning the talented employees to the company’s framework might be an added expense and time consuming. This is because all talented employees cannot match the organization culture. In contrary to this thought, the company could just bring down the health of the company. The decisions taken might be similar in approach and the structure or functioning of the company might become obsolete.

Therefore the process of downsizing the employees has just got a modification but also has in a way been derecognizing the talent and caliber.

At the end of it, a lot of unanswered questions pop up. Is bright sizing a demotivating factor or not? How ethical it is to practice it?