BBC NEWS | Business | Bosses ‘want annual staff cuts’

Further proof[1] that the people who run many companies are so far removed from reality that they really shouldn’t be allowed near anything dangerous. A survey carried out by a recruitment consultancy[2] involved 562[3] “senior managers” came up with some alarming results.

Apparently “one in six”[4] believe that they could have a target of dismissing 20% of their workforce each year

without damaging productivity and morale

I suppose that any company unfortunate enough to be run by such clueless pointy-haired idiots has probably already reached rock bottom on both productivity and morale, so this might be true. But in general, it shows an almost unbelievable lack of understanding of human nature.

Overall, it seems 77%[5] of those surveyed believed that some level of “targeted redundancies” would improve productivity and financial performance. However 75%[6] said they wouldn’t actually do this because they didn’t want to introduce a “climate of fear”.

I’d just like to say that 100% of me[9] thinks that 100% of those surveyed Need To Make Up Their Tiny Minds.

[1] Not that it’s actually needed…
[2] Dogbert’s axiom about “con” and “insult” applies with double force for them
[3] There’s not enough detail in the report to have any idea of if this is a large enough sample to be valid
[4] Poor reporting here – most of the figures are given as percentages, but this one isn’t. It seems to be equal to 16.67% or 93.67 executives[10]
[5] Or 432.74 executives
[6] It’s not altogether clear if that’s 75%[7] overall or 75% of the 77%[8]
[7] Or 421.5 executives
[8] Or 324.555 executives
[9] That’s one Les
[10] There seem to be a lot of partial executives around[11]
[11] Or maybe some rounding errors