Back

The company I worked for was suffering poor sales and decided to reduce reduce costs by terminating 10% of the employees evenly across all departments.

Accounting advised Management that Field Service travel expenses would of course drop by 10% because we would have less people traveling.

We struggled to get them to understand that the amount of work required in the field wasn't going to decrease, and the remaining staff would have to travel _more_ to cover the gaps the layoffs would cause, resulting in _higher_ travel expenses.

And that they should consider the impact of terminating (and eventually trying to replace) highly experienced technical staff relative to those performing routine admin or production.

"No", they said. "The numbers are simple and straightforward."

Beware simple solutions to complex problems.