During tough economic time,employees usually act in the way to make themselves seem valuable to their bosses.The reason for their good behavior is the fear of losing their jobs.In hard period,companies or corporations have to face financial difficulties.Their business’s activities as well as their revenue are affected a lot.Demands and supplies are both decreased,lead to a reducing in profit.Therefore,in order to maintain the profit and budget,many companies has decided to lay off their employees as it is the fastest way.Certainly staffs with poor performance or unable to make their work effective would be removed.They are aware that it is extremely difficult to find other jobs with similar paying if they are laid off.There is not any companies want to hire more staffs as they all tighten their budget.Thus employees try to behave well to impress their bosses,in the hope of being retained.
Employees also go through emotional stress during the difficult time of economy.Apart from the fear of losing jobs,it is caused by their responsibility to their own life and their family as well.They need an income to pay for their basic needs in daily and financial commitment such as utilities bill,accommodation fees,etc...Some of them may have to take care of their parents,grandparents or children too.All of those worries do motivate them to perform in better manners or change their bad habits in workplace.They believe that their change will help them to be more valuable and irreplaceable to the managers.
In fact,most of the firms decide to cut down their employees during tough time,whether the company is big or small.It is more depend on the culture of the company than the size.For instance,Citigroup is a large and famous financial firm in the world.In 2008 recession,they had cut a huge number of jobs,which is 73,056 in total in order to reduce the expenses as much as possible,thus to convince their shareholders about the firm’s future.This big amout of layoffs definitely drive employees to panic emotion.It lead them to behave in better ways,hoping they are capable of keeping their jobs.
Companies face many difficulties in finance during hard economic period.Managers have no choice but to remove workers as they are unable to pay for wages.In 2009,Microsoft Corporation’s fourth-quarter profits dropped by 11%(US$4.17 billion) due to the decrease in demand for IT products and global economic crisis.The company had to respond quickly to the loss.Therefore,they shed 5000 jobs so that they could reduce their capital expenditure and raise the profits.In the same tough period,Microsoft’s competitors such as IBM or HP also made layoffs since they had to deal with financial crisis.By witnessing many cases of cutting jobs,employees would relize that they could not find other occupation in the same industry once they had been removed.They turned out to make themselves irreplaceable and important to the bosses in order not to be unemployed.

(469 works)
References:
“The layoffs King:The 25 companies responsible for 700,000 lost jobs”(18 August 2010).Retrieve on 6 September 2011 from www.dailyfinance.com.

“Microsoft cut 5,000 jobs as profits falls”(22 January 2009).Retrieve on 6 September 2011 at www.computerworld.com