[Closed] How long before Western companies adopt this little wheeze?

Can't see it taking off outside of China and similar centrally controlled economies where there's an awareness that the population are important to the country (admittedly in the way turkeys are to Bernard Matthews).

In the west that would cost money and there is no interest in what happens to the population at large because frankly its the government's problem if the entire populace is unemployed.

Given the recent demonstration by P&O of how employment law appears to be nothing more than a commercial inconvenience, it has the foundations to become popular.

Back when the dotcom bubble burst Agilent's redundancies were announced as the "Workforce Management Program".

Agilent, for anyone unfamiliar with them, were originally part of Hewlett Packard. Agilent were pretty much the original part of Hewlett Packard, they were the part that made scientific instruments, network monitoring equipment and the like. HP divested themselves of those parts when they decided that making PCs and printers was all they wanted to do.

HP used to be known for "the HP way", a radical philosophy that seemed to boil down to "don't treat employees like crap". They were considered a great employer back when I was at university and were renowned for doing things like not laying people off when times were hard, preferring to cut hours but keeping people in work, and stuff like that. When Agilent was spun off they had a slogan "innovating the HP way", which seemed pretty ironic when they started laying people off only a couple of years later. Innovating the HP way... into the bin.

Western companies have been doing it for years - see this as an opportunity.

Ah, when RBS let me and about 5000 colleagues go, we were all gathered around those Charlies Angels style desktop phone in our various offices in groups of 50 or so. The then Chairman started the call by saying "you might have heard we're shrinking, you might even have heard we're going bust! Well, nothing could be further from the truth, As of today the Government has given us £50bn to lend to small businesses so get Britain out of the Credit Crunch" (or words to that effect). Now, as my Job was lending money to small businesses, I felt pretty safe until "Unfortunately, none of this comes without sacrifice, so if you're Job role is RM1, AD1, etc etc, your Job will cease to exist from April the 6th" and that was me gone. Some people who had be left go stated crying, some smiles and even the ones who were staying all seemed to be smiling or crying. We then got to listen to a 45 min speech about how great things would be now they're shed the excess people, which was nice.

IME, it doesn't matter if you're a Chinese Tech Worker, a British Banker, or a Dutch Oven maker, when it's your time, you'll be under no illusions that, you simple do not matter to them and you'll be gone the very second it's more profitable to pay you off, then to keep you.

I've not seen it this way before, but I've definitely seen companies try to change the narrative that leavers are "graduating" rather than "fleeing the sinking ship".

we were all gathered around those Charlies Angels style desktop phone in our various offices in groups of 50 or so. The then Chairman started the call by saying

Memories of effectively this happening in a govt dept in the great Tory bonfire of quangos of 2010. Until they realised they actually needed everyone so renamed and rehomed most roles...

Whoop!

Finally, I'm a graduate.

Twice in fact, in the 90's.

I am so glad I am self employed and don't have to deal with the joys of being a perm. Quite a few times when I was a perm my employer would talk about redundancies and folk would sh1t themselves.

Whoop!

Finally, I’m a graduate.

Congratulations! 👏🏻😉

Ha, I lost track of the euphemisms that were used to describe being made redundant.

You can generally guess that when you join any engineering/science/tech based company that at some point someone from HR will tell you that people are their greatest resource along with some factoid about how they don't even own the building or the IT department, their only commitment is to you the employees.

Then as soon as you hear "we need to effectively manage our resources through this challenging economic climate" you know exactly what managing resources means.

We then got to listen to a 45 min speech about how great things would be now they’re shed the excess people, which was nice.

I thought any sane company split out the two groups? Where I work isnt amazing HR wise but did have the sense to do that last time round.

That said did spend about 3 months under redundancy threat after we got the "you need to come to the office for this meeting. Attendance is compulsory and no option to reschedule if it clashes with something else" which is always a bit of a hint if it isnt accompanied by "critical production defect".
Then had it cancelled at 5pm the day before with no explanation and an uneasy silence before the mid level moron manager got sent off to wreck another business unit and we got someone else in who whilst they didnt quite explain/calm things down did as much as I suspect HR/legal would allow.
I have sent the "graduation" story to a few friends in HR areas so hopefully it will catch on.