How Can HR Leaders Drive Productivity After a Workforce Reduction?

Workforce reductions have returned as a key focal point of executive agendas as U.S. employers announced more than a million job cuts in 2025.

High-profile reductions at companies including Amazon, P&G, Target, UPS, and Verizon have garnered attention. However, data hints at a more widespread trend as companies across sectors have announced layoffs with an evolving spectrum of rationale, including shifting market conditions and technological advancement.

The decisions HR leaders make before, during, and after workforce reduction have tremendous influence on organizational success. Early errors can lead to critical operational and reputational risks that are difficult to reverse. In these critical moments of transition, HR leaders need to be more than the center of well-being and employee engagement; they must also be drivers of organizational continuity and productivity.

In this blog, we will explore how HR leaders can prepare to establish and execute a practical reset that successfully brings the organization through the rapid change brought about by workforce reductions.

Three Questions to Ground the Post-Workforce Reduction Response

1. Where are we most exposed?

A robust post-RIF response begins with an honest assessment of the organization’s current vulnerabilities. This involves a systematic review of capacity, core tasks and obligations, and existing bottlenecks. Firms often experience a measurable reduction in performance and investment during quarters marked by layoffs. In this assessment, you may find that teams are not aligned with current priorities or are unprepared with the assets—people, funds, technology, etc.—needed to meet new expectations. Leaders cannot afford to wait for issues to surface organically.

2. How do roles need to change?

Simply redistributing work among a smaller group of employees is rarely effective. Without intentional redesign, excessive demands and expectation ambiguity can set up the organization’s remaining employees for failure. Sustainable recovery requires deliberate recalibration of roles and collaborative processes.

3. What tangible outputs can HR create to guide this transition?

In the early phase, organizations benefit from mapping critical workflows that assign clear ownership over key decision-making processes. These frameworks should be applicable to all departments and business functions, allowing for greater continuity across the organization.

Additional attention should also be given to identifying skill gaps and professional development opportunities for reskilling and upskilling remaining employees. These efforts create a foundation for maintaining productivity and mitigating attrition risk.

Week by Week: Leading a 30-Day Reset

Once these foundational questions have been addressed, HR leaders and their teams are better equipped to move from assessment to action. The following four-week framework outlines a practical sequence for managing the first month after a workforce reduction to restore operational coherence and enable leaders to intervene early.

Week 1: Freeze and Focus

Stability in the first month depends on a clear articulation of priorities. Publishing a “stop-doing” list—a series of practices that disregard organizational priorities, such as meetings that last longer than an hour—reduces ambiguity and helps focus attention on essential deliverables. At the same time, organizations need to revisit decision-making structures. Unclear authority can create convoluted approval paths following workforce reductions.

Week 2: Enable Managers

Manager enablement is a pivotal component of the stabilization process. Post-layoff environments often leave managers with heightened ambiguity and increased pressure to deliver results with fewer resources. Beyond preparing managers to navigate post-layoff conversations with their teams, managers need clarity on organizational priorities and supportive resources. Failure to help managers rebalance priorities often negatively impacts team performance. Furthermore, employees unaffected by layoffs tend to overcompensate after layoffs, working longer hours in an attempt to demonstrate commitment. Without clear managerial intervention, these behaviors rarely translate into improved performance.

Week 3: Look Beyond Key Performance Indicators

It is common for organizations to experience growing backlogs or increased errors, even when key performance metrics appear stable. Layoffs frequently disrupt team structures and informal networks, leading to process delays and coordination breakdowns before there are visible shifts in financial outcomes. It is essential to use operational metrics in tandem with people metrics such as burnout and unwanted attrition to get a clearer picture of what is lost in a workforce reduction.

A holistic view of performance allows for timely intervention and mitigates the risk of systemic productivity loss down the road.

Week 4: Revisit Knowledge Continuity

Knowledge continuity is a central risk during workforce reduction offboarding. However, within the first month, HR leaders should push the organization to take stock of what institutional knowledge has been lost in initial offboarding processes and identify ways to remedy those gaps. Without systematic efforts to capture and transfer essential knowledge lost in layoff transitions, organizations are increasingly exposed to operational setbacks, such as delivery delays and decreased service quality. Without revisiting knowledge loss, information challenges will impact long-term workforce reduction goals,  impeding both the speed and quality of organizational recovery.

Considerations for Today’s Workforce and Workplace Realities

Beyond the steps HR leaders can take to implement effective change management, organizations must recognize that the landscape in which they conduct reductions has fundamentally changed. With changes in how and where we work, the playbook for post-RIF productivity must be updated accordingly.

First, the shift to hybrid and remote work environments amplifies the potential for miscommunication and unclear accountability. Hybrid models can increase organizational siloing, requiring explicit reinforcement of communication norms and accountability structures.

Second, artificial intelligence has become a complicating factor in workforce redesign. A shift toward AI-supported automation can help backfill the tasks and duties left open by layoffs. However, the skills and processes required for success are changing in real time. Strategic workforce planning in this environment requires HR leaders to consider both upskilling and the reallocation of talent.

Last but not least, employer brand is increasingly a concern as organizations are operating under unprecedented scrutiny. Social media and heightened stakeholder expectations have raised the stakes for post-RIF communications. Now more than ever, there is a higher degree of pressure on how transparent and fair companies are expected to be before, during, and after layoffs.

Bottom Line: Short-Term Workforce Reduction Choices Impact Long-Term Resilience

The success of a workforce reduction is often determined by the clarity leaders create in the aftermath. HR leaders can significantly mitigate the risks of productivity loss, disengagement, and reputational harm by making processes more transparent.

For CHROs and executive teams, the first month after a workforce reduction is not merely a recovery interval—it is an inflection point to reimagine operating models and set a more resilient baseline for the future. Leaders must be equipped to handle both the short-term reaction to workforce reductions and the long-term strategy to build future capabilities.

Looking forward beyond initial interventions, workforce strategy cannot be separated from long-term talent development. Companies that treat reductions as an isolated event rather than a moment for reflection and reimagination put themselves at a disadvantage.

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