Human Capital MBA

Workforce Optimization, Productivity and Staffing Decisions: Why Downsizing Rarely Delivers the Savings It Promises

Closing Module 07: why a single productivity ratio borrowed from a factory floor misleads knowledge and service work, how to decide which roles to build, buy, contract out or hand to a contingent workforce, and why three decades of longitudinal research on employment downsizing keeps failing to find the financial payoff a headcount cut is supposed to deliver, while the people who stay behind absorb a cost no spreadsheet was built to show.

2 Nov 2026 · 27 min read