Given today’s uncertain conditions, it's worth revisiting some advice Evergreen Consulting’s Brent Grover provided in early 2009: When considering expense control initiatives, keep your focus on ‘A’ and ‘B’ performers in your company. Actually, even if you aren’t looking to cut staff, it’s probably worth re-evaluating the makeup of your staff to ensure you can meet your strategic goals.
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Related: The HR Professional’s Strategic Answer Book
According to Grover, 'A' performers are those who if they left the business, customers and fellow employees would miss them. 'B' performers are those that have the potential to be 'A' performers. 'C' players are interchangeable, and if 'D' performers were gone, everybody would be glad. Grover says that 'D' performers tend to be a drag on business goals.
Do everything you can do to hold onto 'A' and 'B,' he recommends, saying that across-the-board cuts just to be "fair" to 'C' and 'D' aren't necessarily the best move. "The philosophy is that you're better off with a small cadre of outstanding, experienced, trained and dedicated experts than a large group of slugs," he says.
John Salveson of Salveson Stetson Group says in The Challenges of Downsizing that companies should maintain a robust performance management system to stay on top of who their top and bottom performers are. "If you don't, there is no way to determine who your underperforming people are," he says. "There are opinions on who they are, but that doesn't make them the underperforming people. You want to keep the highest performers than you can."
