A layoff fundamentally changed how I perceive work

This is probably the most heartbreaking aspect of modern HR policy.

It’s not just about layoffs. It’s about the way the company incentivizes (or doesn’t) worker loyalty and enthusiasm. You could have employees that spend their entire career at a company, and refuse to ever “go the extra mile,” because there’s obviously no motivation to do so.

Loyalty, engagement, and morale usually comes from things other than paychecks. Often, simple, basic Respect can have huge impact on the motivation and loyalty of employees.

It’s actually quite mystifying [to me], how modern HR practice seems to actively discourage things like treating employees with Respect.

I worked for a company that was (at the time I joined them) quite well-known for employee retention. I think the average length of stay was about 25 years, when I joined. They didn’t pay especially well, so their corporate work environment was responsible for that retention.

As the years went on, I watched the HR Department become much colder, and more impersonal. They became absolutely obsessive about constantly reminding employees, at every possible opportunity, that we were simply replaceable cogs in the machine, and that the company could get rid of us, at a whim. They never really improved their compensation, and gradually removed many incentives, so it became all stick, and no carrot.

Performance evaluations became insulting and predictable exercises in humiliation. I was often told to reduce the encouragement in my evaluations (I was a manager, for many years). I used to take pride in specific and eloquent praise in my evaluations. My employees really appreciated that.

HR definitely wanted to make sure that employees felt insecure in their employment. It was obviously a deliberate and calculated policy. Our HR was run by the corporate General Counsel, so, lawyers set the tone.

By the time I left (as a result of a much-anticipated layoff), the employee morale was completely in the shitter, and the company’s much-vaunted employee retention statistic was no more.

At hiring time, they are willing to pay market rate (or some percentage of market rate) to get people in the door. Once you are employed, they don't care anymore and will let excellent people slowly fall behind market compensation with 1% to 2% raises.

When those employees get frustrated and leave for 20% bump in comp, the companies seem fine replacing them with a new hire at market rate. So now, they have a new employee making market rate, they have to train the new employee for months before they are productive and they've taken on the risk of an unknown vs. just giving the existing employee a raise to market rate. It doesn't make sense unless you want to telegraph the message that employees are fungible and you don't really care about people.

I actually makes total sense and a lot of it. I see the take that management doesn't know about knowledge being lost, they don't understand this, they don't understand that. I believed this was case until I started to work for a company that is literally 200 years old.

At some point between joining that company and deciding to leave the previous, I got it -- nobody is actually that stupid, neither people are evil or anything.

Employee being a row in an excel sheet is an important goal that every big company strives to achieve and all the functions, processes and products that are contrary to that dogma are actively rejected by the system as dangerous.

For the company to be the company it must never depend on this particular employee being very smart. Every bit of knowledge that is not written down and confirmed to be in accordance to The Policy is a risk and should be forgotten. That's the intended way.

And of course the only way to discover the market price for real is to spend the money. The cost of losing mister special employee is negative anyway, and for the offchance it's positive, it's worth it.

The evil thing is not this, the evil thing is not being upfront about it. Get a union, negotiate yourself a nice row in the excel sheet and be happy about it or make your own company.