Economic recession: What alternatives companies can have other than Layoffs?

Few examples where cost can be minimized and saved money rather then layoff, those are:

1. Use of air conditioner and water cooler as needed.
2. Working from smaller offices and home with daily productivity targets is the best bet.
3. No travel by business class for any employee at any hierarchy level. Only economy class fair should be reimbursed.
4. Flowers in offices- Not Needed.
5. Encourage Video and telephonic interviews, Avoid traveling as far as possible.
6. Use of rationing of tea, coffee, free transport, telephone and mobile and similar other necessitates but only as per need. Check misuse.
7. Cut food expenditure on employees.
8. No 5 or 7 star hotels, arrangements to be preferred; only basic rooms for visits.
9. Consultants hired only after approval of Accounts and HR Heads with very negotiable fees.
10. Save electricity; reduce usage of printing paper by using double sides etc., and run a campaign to educate employees on optimization of resource and reduction of waste.
11. Revise all kinds of vendor and consultant contracts and renegotiate the rates only after checking economical rates available in market.
12. Recruitment and promotion to be done only after final approval or meeting with HR Head and functional head of the company to avoid wrong decision where money is spent.
13. Senior staff only should handle all money matters by comparing his own man-hour cost to company and impact of decisions.
14. Allow employees a long leave if no work at hand.
15. Try to save at steps of recruitment. Time To Fill (TTF), Offer To Hire (OTH), Interview To Offer (ITO), Route to Interest (RTI)
16. For hiring, consider workers referenced by own employees. Since business is down, employees have extra time to do this and they wont cost you like a bomb.
17 Encourage voluntary retirement for people beyond age of 50 years.

18. Stationery purchase only in case of extreme emergency, computer stationery to be used from other side. Photocopy machine usage to be optimized. Use scanner instead of printer and courier.
19. Scrap/ junk where ever available need to be sold to earn cash.
20. Revise team size to optimize the same and bring per person productivity of whole operation to an optimal level.
21. Try to make some changes in reimbursement policy....
22. Minimize the access of Internet&.only for productive purpose
23. Minimize use of paper napkins, soap...find alternatives.
24. Make efforts to put control on inventories.
25. Strict control on overtime in production department, as far as possible.
26. Time utility should be 100%.
27. Minimize on capital purchase ex: PCD regrinding machine what we have now.
28. Revision in Sales targets and steps to increase finished, unfinished & raw material goods.
29. Percentage reduction target in Vehicle Fuel charges and maintenance.
30. Vehicles being used for office consumption should stop at signals to reduce fuel consumption.
31. May go for "5S" concept to reduce wastages.
32 Enforce a cool off period between alternate AC and tube lights in the office.
32. Club all the couriers and send them to regional office rather than individual offices
35. Rework on accommodations. If you have properties on lease, you can vacate the same and move to an economical one. But before shifting calculate cost.

Review every process thoruoghly and eliminate all redundancies. Eliminate lavishness. Pass on the resultant cost savings to the customer, if possible.

re-negotiate credit terms both with vendors as well as customers in a mutually beneficial way. Place orders in smaller qualtities and more frequently. In a way channelise efforts in increasing the inventory turn over rate. Minimize exposure both receivables as well as inventory. 

Reduce employee salaries and treat that as a short term deposit with the company not exceeding 2 years. Once the recession is over, pay back employees with interest as per the standard norms.

Ask employees to buy or stick to the product that your organization deals with, if it is a regular consumable item.

Analyze the skills gap and train employees suitably & effectively.

Open a counciling cell for employees to survive the personal financial crisis

Re structure the organization and reduce time to act. Stop employee assessment and focus on assessing the current crisis and let employees generate options. 

Thanks for referral Neelam...
Yes I do believe Job Cuts hurts everyone including companies. This is what they should realize first. Companies contemplating layoffs need to consider more than just the hoped for cost savings from a layoff. They need to consider, and plan for, the less obvious effects. They need to consider the reduced morale and the reduced performance and innovation it will bring. They need to consider the reduced quality of the company's overall workforce that will result.

In my opinion companies should adopt Flexleave program which is implemented in few companies where employees will get 20 percent of their salaries & benefits over a 6 - 12 month period. Stock options offered will remain in place for those who took the offer. Employees can take another job during their leave, but can't work for a competitor.......

I believe that my proposed option is the fairest option. Obviously, the net (take home) salary will be reduced due to less number of hours worked. However, the employees will have a valid reason to keep their loyalty to their company.

Ask employees to commit volunteering few extra hours a day & either engage them in same activity or something else. This helps companies to increase productivity and decrease hiring needs. Employees will always perform better when they are empowered rather than scared. This change will make the company better instead of damaging the very thing that made the company successful in the first place, its employees.......

I feel that salary cut can be a better option tan layoff as even if a comp is going for 2-5% sal cut it may not hurt the employees as bad as layoffs and if any one feels other way he/she is free to move on.

Involve them in quality improvement projects and quality circles program, even Kaizen can play a good role. Tell them all initiatives are related to cost reduction which will helps the organization in recession period.

Empower them so individual feel their responsibilities towards organization.

Companies should improve & implement more on their training and should ensure that employees are having right amount of technical skills which will provide best and fast results. Training plays an important role in building best & good careers, if our basic trainings are enough strong then we can get results in time which will help us to deal with current scenarios . . . . . If an organization is not able to spend money to train their own employees then they should think of hiring trained candidates at a entry level so that they can complete at least 80% of task well in time.

The best way to tackle this recession is optimum utilisation of the available resources at the same historical cost. Being in the same industry why the profit margin, efficient production capacity, etc variates, the only reason is the best in the business utilises their available resources in the best possible manner and the rest could not utilise in the same manner.

For instance, take Infosys in the IT industry its result and profit margin is always considered as the benchmark to be achieved by other players. The reason Infosys is ahead in its industry is its optimum utilisation of its human resources. Where as in other companies there is a lot of idle hours spent by the employees where they do not convert it into productive hours, due to poor allocation of resources.

I believe cost cutting or lay off is not the solution to overcome recession. It is going to hamper a company in a long run.

If you want to do someting then please cut expenditure in waste so that company can utilize its resources optimally. If you properly analyze you  will find areas were company is making unnecessary expenditure, these expenditure needs to be prune down or removed. 

Exp:- Indentify areas were resource allocation is very high however productivity and contribution is very low. Similar way identify areas were resource allocation is very low however productivity and contribution towards organisation is very high.

Just trasfer employee from high resource areas to low resource areas to get optimum productivity and contribution towards company's profitability.