Letting an employee go is never an easy thing for an employer to do. Of course, there are times when termination is certainly warranted for a variety of reasons.

In this economy, many employees who will find themselves out of work in 2009 will share something in common: they’ve done absolutely nothing wrong.

And unfortunately their numbers are expected to grow in 2009.

Here in Wisconsin, the Department of Workforce Development is reporting a surge in unemployment claims, and DWD Secretary Roberta Gassman has called the national economic crisis, along with the rate and number of unemployment insurance claims, “unprecedented in recent decades.”

The strategies that decision makers are using in regard to employment and staff levels varies from company to company.

“Employers are rethinking their staffing and recalculating where they are,” says Bill Guilbeault, senior consultant at Appleton-based Guilbeault Consulting LLC. “I’m seeing more across-the-board cutting versus more ‘surgical’ cuts of the past.”

He also says that overall corporate vision is having an impact on these decisions.

“When they’re taking a look at the future, whether or not that view is a short-term one or a longer-term one is influencing these decisions,” he says. “If the view is that what’s happening now is more of an unfortunate, limited issue – and the company is not shattered – the companies are trying to work their way through it.”

Among those approaches: Re-assigning skilled workers to other departments, relying on short-term layoffs or using this time to explore other opportunities beyond the company’s core competencies.

But if the view is that this economic crisis is more of a long-term slump, permanent employment changes are occurring.

“That’s where the cuts are happening, where companies are cutting their workforces and trying to move on,” says Guilbeault, an HR consulting generalist with a manufacturing background.

How employers view their employees also determines what happens to their workforce in a trying economic time.

“Fundamentally, companies either view their people as an investment or as an expense,” he says. “In each instance, they will play their cards differently.”

If people are viewed as an asset in an organization, your assets are the last thing you want to get rid of, unless you absolutely have no choice.

“With this view, when things pick back up, it’s much easier to re-deploy quickly, particularly if you do have highly skilled employees,” says Guilbeault.

Yet some companies in 2009 will be forced to make some hard decisions about letting good people – those good assets – go.

“I think of the employers with solid management teams who are finding the scope of their businesses reduced,” he says. “It’s very difficult to have a proven team in place and be forced to let one team member go, particularly when it may not have anything to do with his or her performance at all. It also has an effect on the team as a whole.”

Should your organization find itself at the point of having to reduce staff, the question of severance packages is likely to come up. The severance packages of six months to a year of salary and benefits are becoming as rare as a confirmed sighting of the Rhinelander Hodag.

“Now it’s more likely that people are getting two weeks of salary, and they’re pretty happy with that because it’s better than nothing,” says Guilbeault, who notes that the skill level of an employee tends to dictate the value of a severance package, if one is offered. “There is nothing mandated in regards to severance packages other than COBRA coverage.”

But that isn’t necessarily a thought that sits with business owners who have prided themselves on taking care of their employees. “Employers are used to providing a certain benefit level and it can be agonizing to say that you can’t offer a solid severance package, particularly if you’re forced to let good employees go,” he notes. “But there are employers who are being now forced to think about the survival of their business and how bad it’s really going to get.”

By Laurie Arendt

Laurie Arendt is editor of CRW. She can be reached at crweditor@crwmag.com