Here’s what companies are doing and plan on doing because of the slower economy. Watson Wyatt’s survey was conducted during the week of Dec. 8, and includes responses from 117 companies across a variety of industries.
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| Action | Change already made | Change planned in the next 12 months |
| Travel restrictions | 48% | 16% |
| Hiring freeze | 47% | 18% |
| Layoffs | 39% | 23% |
| Downgrade/cancel holiday party | 35% | 8% |
| Increase benefits communication | 32% | 35% |
| Eliminate/reduce seasonal workers | 28% | 16% |
| Organization-wide restructuring | 23% | 21% |
| Eliminate/reduce training | 23% | 18% |
| Raise employee health premium contribution | 20% | 17% |
| Increase pay communication | 16% | 43% |
| HR function restructuring | 14% | 21% |
| Salary freeze | 13% | 19% |
| Mandatory holiday shutdown | 13% | 5% |
| Reduce/eliminate other employee programs | 12% | 12% |
| Salary reductions | 5% | 6% |
| Early retirement window | 3% | 6% |
| Reduce 401(k)/403(b) match | 3% | 7% |
| Reduce workweek | 2% | 6% |
Great stats! Gives everyone a great heads up to the current situation!
Yasser
http://www.jobstaxi.com
This article highlights a huge trend we have seen in the last 3-4 months, namely that companies are putting more of their sales and marketing resources into their inside sales department and have dramatically increased travel restrictions on their outside salesforce. In other words, their sales teams are being told to sell remotely when at all possible.
We have been receiving a huge number of inquiries regarding tools and technologies to facilitate higher productivities from the inside sales teams.
To see that 48% of companies have already imposed travel restrictions confirms what we have already seen.
We have decided that inside sales really means remote sales, our site is located at http://www.insidesales.com