New job, same company
By redeploying workers, employers can avoid morale-sapping staff cuts
Nancy Hobbs expected the worst when she was called to her manager's office in November. In this economy, such meetings often end with employees out of work.
"I had a pit in my stomach," said Hobbs, 54, of Cambridge. "I never prayed so hard in my life."
But instead of being let go, the daytime housekeeping supervisor at Boston's Liberty Hotel was offered a janitorial position on the overnight shift. It was a huge relief. Hobbs's husband lost his job as a cemetery groundskeeper more than a year ago. Without a job, she said, "I wouldn't be able to pay my bills."
The Liberty Hotel, like other businesses, is looking for ways to ride out the recession while minimizing the number of layoffs it must make. One way is to move experienced workers into jobs that can't be left vacant despite the downturn. Some companies are redeploying employees to fill key positions that are available due to attrition, increased demand for particular services or products, or cuts in outside-service contracts.
For workers, the upside is obvious - continued employment, often with the same pay and benefits. For companies, it's cheaper to reassign employees already familiar with an organization's culture and procedures than to hire from outside. And there is also a broader advantage: By redeploying workers, businesses can minimize the drain on morale and productivity caused by layoffs and worries about additional job cuts.
Even though Hobbs switched from inspecting guest rooms to scrubbing wine stains from the lobby floor, the change isn't a demotion. She takes home the same paycheck and keeps her supervisor title.
"We said, 'We don't want to let you go,' " said Jim Treadway, the hotel's managing director. "Our guest experience here is directly related to the morale of the employee population."
The Liberty, which opened in September 2007, hasn't been able to save everyone's job amid the deepening recession. Since November, it has laid off 15 employees, or about 5 percent of its workforce.
As part of a cost-cutting effort, the hotel eliminated a layer of management in the housekeeping department, consolidated room service and guest service call centers, and made other changes. By ending its $13,000 monthly contract with an outsourced cleaning crew, it was able to spend money on janitorial salaries for Hobbs and three other redeployed workers who otherwise would have been unemployed.
At the Langham Hotel Boston, the opening of a new bar and restaurant created five job openings last month. The Financial District hotel filled the positions with five employees who would otherwise have been laid off from the guest relations, administration, housekeeping, room service, and sales departments.
Human resources executives say there isn't enough data to indicate whether redeployment is a growing trend. But John Challenger, chief executive of Chicago outsourcing consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc., said more of his clients are now talking about shifting workers into different jobs. During his 25 years surveying the national employment scene, Challenger said, "companies didn't seem to redeploy very often." That was especially true at massive companies where each division has its own human resources operation to independently hire and lay off workers, he said.
Suzanne M. Bump, Massachusetts' secretary of Labor and Workforce Development, said she expects to see worker redeployment rise because as jobs become more specialized, the cost of recruiting and training new employees increases.
Even when an outside candidate might technically be a better match for a position, a current employee already understands a company's inner workings and has established relationships within the organization, Bump said.
She speaks from experience, having recently redeployed the largest batch of workers in the department's 70-year history.
Last fall, 38 career counselors in the welfare-to-work program would have been laid off due to budget cuts, but instead they were reassigned to the state's unemployment insurance call centers, which needed 73 additional clerks to help the surging number of unemployed workers file claims. None of the former counselors took a pay cut. While the career counselors and new hires all needed a month of training, Bump said, the employees already on the state payroll had an advantage.
"They were already familiar with the system, and these were people who had already proven themselves as being successful with working with unemployed people, which is a stressful job," she said. By contrast, five claims takers hired from outside in December have already quit.
Long-term, redeployment could save the state and companies a lot of money. Recruiting and acclimating a new employee typically takes a year and costs 20 to 40 percent of that person's salary, said Aneil K. Mishra, a visiting associate professor of management at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business.
In addition to hurting employees' morale and productivity, layoffs also affect their commitment and trust, Mishra said. Redeployment, however, signals an organization values its workers, he said.
"Crafting this message of hope is so critical for the survivors," Mishra said. "That becomes the essence by which you're going to be able to turn the organization around."
At Lexington marketing company VistaPrint, redeployment has been a longstanding practice to help employees gain a better understanding of the expanding business. But it took on new urgency last fall as the company was slowing its hiring rate because of the recession and needed more employees in roles that would directly generate revenue. So five people who used to woo job candidates are now doing something more pressing - pitching VistaPrint to potential customers.
Leah Waitkun, one of VistaPrint's former recruiters, considers it a way to branch out professionally, not just a push by the company to bring in more money.
"I don't know I would ever have a chance to move into an acquisition marketing role and be in a position where I'm really focusing on helping the business grow," said Waitkun, 27, who is earning the same salary as before. "I think they actually wanted to make it more like something that would build people's careers and get people more exposed to other opportunities in the company."
Nicole C. Wong can be reached at nwong@globe.com. 