If you, as a business owner or manager, had to reduce your workforce, what would that look like? Where would you start? Who would you never want to lose? Ultimately, asking these questions aims to determine your key team members and increase the company’s morale. This is what Reed Hastings and Erin Meyers call “talent density” in their book, No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention.
Discover Talent Density
Key team members are high-performing, exceptional collaborators and have positive attitudes about work and life. It should not come as a surprise to you that work performance and attitudes are contagious.
Something that Hastings and Meyers discussed in their book is their experience in reducing their staff at Netflix by ⅓. They feared the staff reduction would cause frustration among their team members since they would have to take on the extra work from those leaving.
To their surprise, the company morale drastically improved. Why? Because the talent density of high-performing talent had increased. Hastings and Meyers found that talented people make each other more effective and push each other to achieve more.
Contagious Work Behavior
Consequently, team members with adequate performance or a poor attitude about work or life bring down company morale.
As I said, performance and attitude are contagious. So, if you have a bunch of negative Nancys on your team, your company’s morale will undoubtedly decline. In contrast, if you have some people on your team underperforming, others will feel slighted as they continue to pick up the slack for them.
What if you have a team member who is excellent at what they do but has a nasty attitude? Well, Reed and Hastings suggest this person has to go because that team member is bringing down the mindset and morale of the rest of the staff. It is the same when you have a team member with a great attitude but constantly underperforms. The rest of your staff may enjoy being around that under-performer, but they do not like having to pick up the slack for them regularly.
It only takes 1-2 adequate performers to bring down the attitude of the rest of the team. Remember, it is contagious.
Implement Talent Density
When a business owner faces the challenge of reducing staff, consider the company’s talent density. Those team members who are your high performers with positive attitudes will more than likely spread their positive attitudes and increased performance to the rest of your team. With many business owners faced with the challenge of growing inflation costs, talent density is certainly something to consider.
An efficient way to successfully reduce your workforce to implement talent density within your company is to outsource what is feasible. Outsourcing allows your team to focus on core business work since someone else manages menial tasks elsewhere. Check out our blog on outsourcing here.
Additionally, implementing automation for specific tasks lets your team focus on core business work for the same reason. Check out the benefits of business automation here.