IT firms regret GFC firing splurge: study

A Hudson report released today has said that an "overwhelming majority" of Australian and New Zealand ICT employers believe they cut too much staff in response to the global financial crisis (GFC). Many of those companies now think they're under-resourced and have said that they lost a significant number of "high performers" in their lay-off rounds.

According to the recruitment company Hudson, 84 per cent of companies "made too many redundancies during the downturn and 32 per cent of total losses were high performers".

A hatchet job? (Hatchet image by John Lewis, CC2.0)

"Organisations 'cut the fat' but results suggest many also 'cut into the muscle'," the Hudson report said.

The report found that three-quarters of employers (73 per cent) and 61 per cent of employees believed their organisations were "under-resourced following loss of headcount".

In addition, two-thirds of ICT employers (62 per cent) also said they currently do not have the right team in place to grow their business.

However, over half of employers (57 per cent) across all professions agree there is more competition for candidates and 54 per cent of organisations are now "hiring more". Over a third (35 per cent) of respondents believed that the current hiring is now about replacing people "that were lost during the economic downturn".

The study also found that employers reported that 45 per cent of their new hires were "not good". However, 54 per cent of employers are focused on "raising the bar" in their hiring expectations.

Hudson's report said that ICT employers lacked "a layer of sophistication" in their hiring methods. "[They need to] understand better the direct relationship between the effectiveness of the procedures they use and the success of their hires," Hudson said.

Overall, the report found that employers in Australia and New Zealand's ICT industry "are showing a strong degree of confidence in the post-downturn market".

For the study, 1690 employees and 605 employers were interviewed online by Hudson, which also looked at current attitudes towards job seeking.