How to motivate your employees...

Had a good demonstration today of how (not) to keep your employees motivated:

1. Tell them outsourcing is inevitable in a timeframe between 6 & 18 months
2. Assure them they will be hired by the company they will be outsourced to, in exchange for a 15% pay cut
3. Make sure they know their current benefits (mostly bank-related) will NOT continue

In compensation, they get 3 months' pay in a lump sum (conveniently, just before the summer holiday period) and a guarantee of a job for 5 years. Or in other words: within 4 years, start looking for a job elsewhere.

Now, that's good motivation skills, right?

Amazingly enough, everyone seems to be happy about the 3 months' package and not paying much attention to the rest, as if it were "minor details".

If you look at it from an outsider's point of view though, you can see a lot of problems coming on their way:
- Average workforce age is around 30 to 35
- They're all IT employees, but very few are really "IT-minded" or specialised in any domain (except banking)
- They've been working on highly customized (if not custom-built) systems that apply to the banking world and nothing else

The company that will hire them will most likely be one of the "experts" on this domain: LogicaCMG, IBM, EDS, etc. They might look into keeping some of the key people, those that know how to run the day-to-day business, and some might be offered a different job within their organisation: there is, after all, a lot of WebSphere knowledge around here though this will be limited to 2 - 3% of the workforce.

Others might get lucky and get some sort of "behind-the-desk" job, but risk being outsourced again in the long run.

So, you'll end up with 70% (being optimistic here) of under-qualified IT people, with about 40 years of age, being "dumped" on the marketplace and looking for a nice, well-paid, not very stressing IT job. Maybe even as managers.

I don't know, I really don't understand why they're not worried. Maybe they know something I don't?