Latest / Hiring & Firing with Fexingo: Recruitment, Performance, and Workforce Decisions / How to Hire People You Might Lay Off Someday
Transcript
- Lucas: So there's a freight logistics company outside of Columbus, Ohio, about three hundred employees, and they did something that sounds almost backwards. They started hiring people with the explicit plan that some of them might get laid off. Luna: That sounds like a terrible pitch. 'Join us, we might fire you.' How did that get through a first interview? Lucas: Well, they didn't lead with that. But the CFO told me the real strategy was to build a workforce that could survive a downturn without losing the company's core knowledge. And honestly, after listening to him explain it, I think there's something genuinely useful here for any company that's been through a layoff and struggled to rebuild. Luna: Okay, I'm intrigued. But before we go deeper, I want to say — if today's episode gives you one useful idea, the way these stay ad-free is listener support. Buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. It's a small way to keep this going. Lucas: Yeah, that's the whole engine. And today's idea is about making your team more resilient, which is something every manager thinks about but rarely plans for in advance. Lucas: So the Columbus company — let's call them Mid-State Freight — had a brutal layoff back in 2023. They cut about 18 percent of their operations staff, and it took them eight months to get back to full productivity. The CFO said the real damage wasn't the cost savings; it was the chaos of rehiring, retraining, and trying to rebuild processes that walked out the door with people who knew them cold. Luna: That's the classic hidden cost of layoffs. You lose the institutional memory, not just the payroll. Lucas: Exactly. So after that, they decided to take a different approach to hiring. They now run what they call a 'layoff drill' twice a year. A simulated workforce reduction, where each manager has to identify which roles could be cut with the least damage, and which people are so critical that losing them would break a core process. Luna: A simulation sounds sensible, but how do you actually test it without firing anyone? Lucas: They do it by temporarily reassigning people. For a week, they pull the 'non-critical' people out of a team and have them shadow a completely different function. The goal is to create redundancy. So if you lose your billing specialist, your dispatcher can step in and keep the invoices flowing, even if it's slower. Luna: So they're cross-training everyone, but with the specific goal of making layoffs less painful. Lucas: Right. And here's the twist: they've started baking this into their job descriptions. When they interview for an operations role, they ask, 'If your position were eliminated, what would you need to hand off in the first week?' That's a question that forces both the candidate and the hiring manager to think about what the job really contains, beyond the standard duties. Luna: I love that question. It reveals how much the person understands their own role and what's actually essential versus just routine. Lucas: And it helps them spot candidates who are comfortable with change. The people they've hired since 2024 are more adaptable, more willing to document their work, and they know from day one that the company takes disruption seriously. Luna: But doesn't that scare off good candidates? I mean, if you tell someone 'we might lay you off,' they're going to think twice. Lucas: They don't say it that bluntly. They frame it as 'we operate in a cyclical industry, and we want to build a team that survives cycles together.' The CFO told me that candidates who value stability above all tend to self-select out, which is fine, because they probably wouldn't thrive in that environment anyway. Luna: That's a smart way to filter for cultural fit. Not everyone wants a job that's a bit unpredictable. Lucas: And for the ones who stay, they've put together what they call a 'severance playbook.' It's a documented plan for how they'd handle a layoff if it ever became necessary. It covers severance packages, outplacement services, and how they'd communicate the news to the team. Luna: A severance playbook sounds like something every company should have, but most don't even think about it until the moment it's needed. Lucas: Exactly. And this playbook also includes a 'rehire protocol.' They track former employees as a talent pool, and they've built a network of alumni who they actively stay in touch with. The CFO claims that when they did have a small reduction last year, they were able to rehire two people within six weeks, compared to the six months it took back in 2023. Luna: Six weeks to rehire is remarkable. But what about the people who were laid off and don't come back? How do you handle that relationship? Lucas: They treat it as a relationship, not a severance. They offer outplacement coaching, they keep the alumni network active with occasional networking events, and they encourage managers to stay in touch on a personal level. The result is that many former employees become brand ambassadors, not detractors. Luna: That's the ideal. But I want to push back a little. There's a tech startup I was reading about that lost its only documentation specialist in a layoff, and it set them back months. They didn't have any cross-training, and the docs were a mess. How would Mid-State's approach have helped them? Lucas: That's a great example, because it highlights the difference between having a plan and just hoping you don't have to use it. Mid-State's drills force managers to identify single points of failure. If you have one documentation specialist and no one else can write a user guide, that's a critical risk. The drill would flag that and say, 'Hey, we need to train someone else to do the basics.' Luna: But what if you can't afford to cross-train everyone? Especially in a startup where everyone's already stretched thin. Lucas: Fair point. But the startup's problem wasn't lack of time; it was lack of foresight. They could have had the documentation specialist record a few Loom videos or write a handoff guide as part of their regular work. That takes maybe a day a quarter. The cost is tiny compared to losing months of productivity. Luna: So it's about making knowledge transfer a habit, not a one-off project. Lucas: Exactly. And that's the core of this whole approach. Hiring with the possibility of layoffs in mind isn't about being pessimistic. It's about being realistic and building a team that can handle change without falling apart. It's like buying insurance for your company's intelligence. Luna: I remember you once said that the best time to prepare for a layoff is when you're not having one. Lucas: I did say that, and it's true. But it's hard to get managers to think about it when things are going well. That's why the drill is so important. It makes the conversation regular, and it takes the fear out of it. Luna: So what's the one thing a listener could do tomorrow to start applying this? Lucas: Pick one critical role on your team that you could not operate without, and ask the person in that role to create a 'runbook' — a step-by-step guide of their daily tasks, including the little things they know that aren't written down anywhere. And then have someone else try to follow that runbook for a day. It's a simple exercise, but it will reveal exactly how much tribal knowledge is locked in people's heads. Luna: And if you do that for a few key roles, you're already ahead of most companies. Lucas: Absolutely. And if you want to go further, you can start treating your severance policy as a talent development tool. The companies that do this well have a reputation for treating people fairly, even when they have to let them go. And that reputation makes hiring easier. Luna: It's interesting, because we usually think of layoffs as the opposite of good hiring. But here, it's part of the same system. Lucas: That's the frame I hope listeners take away. You're not hiring for a job; you're hiring for a relationship that might end. And if you manage that relationship well, it pays off for everyone — the employee, the company, and the next company that hires them. Luna: I think that's a solid note to end on. If you want to share your own layoff drill or runbook idea, we're on social as FexingoBusiness. Lucas: And remember, if today gave you something useful, buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo helps us keep these conversations going without ads. We'll be back tomorrow with another angle on building resilient teams.