With things the way they are at the moment, you may have to make some lay-offs that you would prefer not to in order to keep your business afloat. This often also means that you can’t afford a decent severance package or access to professional outplacement services either.

So what can you do to help soften the blow of being laid-off? Here are six ideas that won’t cost you the earth!

1. Tap Your Network – talk to your clients, vendors, competitors, anyone in your network and see if they are interested in any employers you have to let go. If it helps, you may even be able to work out a way to share employees that you want to keep but can’t afford full time with another company.

2. Start An Online Forum – you could use this as a way to pool talent with other companies. You could use networks such as LinkedIn or Facebook to connect workers to other potential jobs or freelance work. They will appreciate you trying to help them find more work in the area they are trained in and know best.

3. Give As Much Notice As Possible – You may only be required to give employees two weeks notice, but if you can give them a month it gives them much more time to work out what they are going to do. During this time, be flexible with your employees working hours so that they can attend interviews. Consider letting them, once they have been laid off, still being allowed in to use printer, copier and fax facilities to help them with their job hunting as well.

4. Tell Them About Local Resources – this may be career centres run by your local college or government agencies that can help them write their resumes, give them career counselling, job fairs, retraining help and many other helpful events so that they become strong applicants for future work.

5. Give Them An Honest Reference – potential employers may think you have laid-off an employee because of poor performance. Let them know that this isn’t true and that you would have loved to keep them on if you could as well as vouching for their experience.

6. Keep In Touch – Business may pick up again sooner than you initially expect. If you keep in touch with previous employees you may be able to offer them work again in the future, even if it’s only part time. This could benefit both of you in the future.

What Do You Think?

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