The recent economic struggles have seen the layoff of several employees in companies and even some in public service .It is however significant to realize that since each company and or sector is different, there are different criteria to be used when laying off employees. The general rule is that it has to be justified and fairness must be considered all across the board.
Job Prioritization and Layoff Plan
The primary legal requirement when making any lay off is that it should not be based on any form of characteristic or discrimination of any form. For example it would be prudent to use length of time until the employee reaches retirement age as criteria to lay him off. This would result in age discrimination. As a police chief there are certain job priorities that I will take into consideration. Police Captains’ jobs will have to be prioritized because each one of them is in charge of a precinct hence it would not be wise to lay off any of them. The other prioritized job will be the dispatch unit of the police call. Since many 911 calls come in at a particular time, it will be vital to prioritize the job in order to avoid putting emergency callers on hold.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
As a result of this I will have to reduce the other departments carefully considering the work done by each department. I will focus on doing away with some job position like secretary. This will go a long way since in case of anything one will have to print and do the paper work by oneself and file the appropriate reports on time. I will therefore lay off 4 of the secretaries and leave only one. I will also eliminate the position of the office messenger as most of our communications happens online and the department has a Wi-Fi which works perfectly. The 3 messengers will therefore be laid off. I would use the criteria of voluntary retirement to send the 5 officers I need to cut. In as much as the federal law forbids discrimination based on age. It is allowed to identify persons willing to take retirement and give them a retirement package with full benefits (George, 2003).
Ethical Issues that may arise
The process will be fair and open to all for scrutiny. Some external influences especially from the mayor’s office and the District Attorney’s office will try to influence this process to retain their favorites in the department but this will not be allowed in any way. In order to maintain fairness, all members of the department will be informed of the ongoing lay off to prepare each one of them psychologically and for fairness every person will be thoroughly explained to as to why they are being laid off and we will give them sufficient time to plan their lives accordingly. Moreover if any of my relative is involved then I will recuse myself from taking part in the process and let other impartial persons handle it to ensure fairness in the process (De Pree, 2010).
The work left behind by the laid off personnel will be equally distributed among persons who have limited duties at the precincts to ensure efficiency. The public might have mixed reaction to these layoffs but the public relations office will be tasked with issuing out a statement as to the reason for the lay off and the criteria used in order to ensure openness. Finally, as for the gadgets and limited resources and programs, the department will undertake to punish officers who willfully damage or lose department’s equipment by deducting them off their pay checks. The department will also seek to repair damaged equipment and come up with more stringent measures on issuing out of equipment to officers (Sutton, 2007).
References
DePree M. (2010). Leadership is an Art. Boston; MA, Boston Publishers.
George B. (2003). Authentic Leadership: Rediscovering the Secrets of Creating Lasting Value. New York, Princeton Press.
Sutton I.R (2007). The No Asshole Rule: Building a civilized workplace and surviving one that isn’t. New York, New York Publishers.
