Moral Dilemmas

Stainless_Steel

Hi fellow engineers,

Something has been on my mind lately and it would be helpful to hear other engineer's experience or opinions.

How does your conscience deal with re-designing processes that result in significant head count reductions? I'm not talking 1 or 2 jobs, up to 20 per process re-design.

Up until a year ago, I never even thought about it, but now with many many people becoming jobless across the country its starting to play on my mind.

If you have already been in these situations then let me know your perspective. Likewise if you have an opinion then fire away too.

Thanks

godtabh

If you dont do it some one else will and canyou figure out what would happen to you?

Hagar

Many years ago I came up with a very slick process that resulted in a small packaging plant with about sixty people employed being shut down within a month.

I thought I was clever, indeed it was a damn clever problem solution, and basked in the admiration of my bosses and colleagues but later when it sunk in I felt really bad. I decided from then on to leave being really clever to other people. I can't undo it but I won't do it again.

Stainless_Steel

kearnsr wrote: »

If you dont do it some one else will and canyou figure out what would happen to you?

Does that mean its ok?

Hagar wrote: »

May years ago I came up with a very slick process that resulted in a small packaging plant with about sixty people employed being shut down within a month.

I thought I was clever, indeed it was a damn clever problem solution, and basked in the admiration of my bosses and colleagues but later when it sunk in I felt really bad. I decided from then on to leave being really clever to other people. I can't undo it but I won't do it again.

Thanks for sharing your experience.

Like you I also receive admiration from the bosses. But the dagger looks the floor workers give really gets to me.

Although maybe I can take heart in the fact that the workers aren't exactly busting their gut as it is. The reason for so much excess resource is largely down to slow rates by them, so previous management staffed according to the almost go-slow run rates.

Hagar

Stainless_Steel wrote: »

The reason for so much excess resource is largely down to slow rates by them, so previous management staffed according to the almost go-slow run rates.

I've seen this myself. I worked for a company who invested a significant amount of capital in hi-tech manufacturing machinery which should have raised production from 13,000 units per hour to almost 25,000 units per hour. Productivity plateaued at 13,600 units per hour no matter what was done. Experts were brought in from Switzerland to examine the plant but there was nothing wrong with it. After going over all the production records I found a Union productivity agreement that paid maximum bonus at 13,600 units per hour.

Totally infuriating as nobody was being laid off in fact we need extra staff down the production line to handle the higher output. Job creation that was being stifled by greedy union staff.

Stainless_Steel

Hagar wrote: »

Job creation that was being stifled by greedy union staff.

+ 1 - Have experience of this also. A lot of the time they restist change that is even for their own benefit.

So what do people consider more ethical? - High head count with most people on a go-slow working 30% efficiently, or lower head count with everyone working well and quite possibly getting job satisfaction.

folan

I understand the dilema. However, I think you would be wrong and foolsih not to go forward with the redesign.

I hate to side with big business, but if these result in significant cost savings and productivity iincreases, then its the best thing for everyone involved. People may loose their job, but the other side is that other areas which were left behind because of expenses going elsewhere can see some stability.

It may not seem like the right thing to do, but when costs spiral to mean people cannot afford to employ the costly workers, they may well loose their job anyway.

I can only say that I do not envy you.

folan

hell, it might even result in the savings to redeploy employees to other areas where they are needed more.

Turbulent Bill

IMHO it depends on the context. A struggling company may need a new process to safeguard the whole enterprise, so some jobs lost is better than every job lost. Of course there's an element of corporate greed in some cases, but as kearnsr said, when it comes to global markets someone is going to do it if you don't.

Ultimately your responsibility is to the client, so provided the work is legal and ethically correct you can't really object.

Cheeble

If you innovate, you lose some jobs.
If you don't innovate, you lose all of them.

Which would you rather?

Cheeble-eers

mawk

good thread.

Im not far enough along in my career to have put any volume of people out of work. But its certainly something ill have to weigh up when those projects come about.

And that union bonus peak at 13600 is disgraceful, and clearly outdated. I hope the issue was solved

enda1

Its not really a moral dilemma I don't think.
Imagine it this way:

If my company exists in a two product marketplace where the customer will either choose the product from my company or that from the other.

So currently we have 50 staff and fifty percent market-share.
Imagine we hire ten more, boost production and lower costs thus bringing us to 75% market-share. Now our competitor cuts twenty staff.

Do I feel guilty? NO!

This is the real world. We as engineers have to always try to improve efficiency, increase quality, lower cost etc. Not try to safeguard jobs.

Mr Benevolent

Not try to safeguard jobs.

To put it quite simply - it's not your job to save jobs. Imagine designing a fusion weapon. It's your job to design it, not use it.

Stainless_Steel

Thanks for all the replies guys, much obliged.

I agree it is my job to design the best process, but I put a person's mortgage repayments and child's pocket money above a pat on the back from the fat cats.

I will also be re-designing areas that are known to be under staffed...so hopefully there will be some re-deployment...

Gurgle

Stainless_Steel wrote: »

How does your conscience deal with re-designing processes that result in significant head count reductions? I'm not talking 1 or 2 jobs, up to 20 per process re-design.

Its up to the management whether they let the staff go - keeping the same output for less staff, or keep the same staff and increase the output.

Either way, it makes the company more competetive and gives long term security to the people who are kept - presumably the best and hardest working of the staff.

A process engineers job is efficiency.
If you didn't do your job as well as you could - thats industrial sabotage, you should be sacked.

Cheeble

Stainless_Steel wrote: »

...I put a person's mortgage repayments and child's pocket money above a pat on the back from the fat cats....

I find that an odd way of looking at it.

Presumably you want your company to do well? Isn't that what pays the mortgages and pocket money?

And who, exactly, are "the fat cats"? Do you mean your boss? His boss? The self same guys that are doing their best to make the company a success?

Cheeble-eers

Stainless_Steel

Cheeble wrote: »

I find that an odd way of looking at it.

Presumably you want your company to do well? Isn't that what pays the mortgages and pocket money?

And who, exactly, are "the fat cats"? Do you mean your boss? His boss? The self same guys that are doing their best to make the company a success?

Cheeble-eers

I want my company to do well of course. But what about when a company is more profitable than ever and are simply using the recession band wagon as an oppurtunity to let people go?

Fat cats as in the Directors and co. Of course they are trying to make the company do well. But without me they wouldn't be able to put a figure on the redundancies. I could simply say we only need 5 cuts even though we could reduce by 20, and they would be none the wiser....I guess they trust me to do a good job.

Bare in mind lads its easy to say there's no dilemma when you've never had job cuts made through your design being on the news, or when you've never crossed a picket line of people frightened to be losing their jobs and what the future holds for them.

Cheeble

S_S, I don't disagree with you that there can be dilemmas.

And yes, I've faced both of the situations you describe, so it's not "easy" for me to say.

However, I've known a lot of directors, and generally I've found them to be a lot smarter, and more caring of their staff, than you appear to be giving them credit for.

What makes you say that they'd be none the wiser without you?

But my main point is that I don't see it as either ethical, or moral, to withold an innovation which improves the efficiency of production, even if that innovation means redundancies. In the long term, that would just make you responsible for the death of a whole industry.

Cheeble-eers

spideog7

Confab wrote: »

it's not your job to save jobs. Imagine designing a fusion weapon. It's your job to design it, not use it.

While I agree it is not the OP's job to save jobs (unless that is his/her job!), I don't think that's a fair comparison I think anyone working on military technology should think long and hard about what they are working on and how it will be implemented, I know I'd try my best not to do it, even though there is a lot of interesting work in that area.

That said I think in the OP's case if he or she didn't do their job then that's tantamount to the guys in the Union who put a cap on production, it's the same old "jobs for the boys" attitude that annoys me. Sure if we all did our jobs half assed there'd be loads more jobs for engineers, there'd also be bridges falling down and planes falling out of the sky... truth is a lot of people rely very heavily on the work you do so you don't get to choose how well you do it, just whether or not you do it.

Boston

Stainless_Steel wrote: »

I want my company to do well of course. But what about when a company is more profitable than ever and are simply using the recession band wagon as an oppurtunity to let people go?

Fat cats as in the Directors and co. Of course they are trying to make the company do well. But without me they wouldn't be able to put a figure on the redundancies. I could simply say we only need 5 cuts even though we could reduce by 20, and they would be none the wiser....I guess they trust me to do a good job.

Bare in mind lads its easy to say there's no dilemma when you've never had job cuts made through your design being on the news, or when you've never crossed a picket line of people frightened to be losing their jobs and what the future holds for them.

The problem in Ireland is that we can't compete, simple as. Jobs are going to the UK, Europe and further a field because of a lack industrial modernising. You may be saving someone's Job today, but what good is that if all the staff are let go 2 years down the road because the entire facility has move country? There is no dilemma, if you down modernise your competition will at which point you're the one looking for a job and your family are the ones wondering how next months mortgage is going to be paid. If you can't handle the pressure of your job, I'm sure you're more then qualified enough to work on the factory floor and put your life in someone else's hands.

Next month when you wondering why half your salary is going on taxation, just remember the horrible over resourced civil service. Perhaps if they modernised taxation wouldn't be so high and your employer could afford to expand rather then lay off staff?

Cheeble

Stainless_Steel wrote: »

...I could simply say we only need 5 cuts even though we could reduce by 20, and they would be none the wiser....I guess they trust me to do a good job....

Wouldn't that make everybody else in the business carry the extra 15 people who aren't contributing anything?

Ethics: it's tricky stuff, no? Should we do the thing which will make us popular, the thing which will save our own skin, the thing which the majority vote for, the thing which distributes the pain or gain equally, or apportions it according to effort, or skills, or amount invested, or keep our heads down, or stand up and be counted? It seems to me that a lot of it's subjective and down to personal belief systems or personal circumstances and (...cliche coming up...) there is no absolute right or wrong. Discuss!

Cheeble-eers

Stainless_Steel

Cheeble wrote: »

Wouldn't that make everybody else in the business carry the extra 15 people who aren't contributing anything?

Ethics: it's tricky stuff, no? Should we do the thing which will make us popular, the thing which will save our own skin, the thing which the majority vote for, the thing which distributes the pain or gain equally, or apportions it according to effort, or skills, or amount invested, or keep our heads down, or stand up and be counted? It seems to me that a lot of it's subjective and down to personal belief systems or personal circumstances and (...cliche coming up...) there is no absolute right or wrong. Discuss!

Cheeble-eers

Excellent post, thanks for your contribution. I guess you're right...we can't have it everyway. I don't like laying off people, but also don't think its ethical to have blatent waste man power.

Boston

If the employeer had a productive work force he'd be looking to expand production when the costs where lowered, instead he wants to off load staff.

Gurgle

Boston wrote: »

If the employeer had a productive work force he'd be looking to expand production when the costs where lowered, instead he wants to off load staff.

Theres a finite market for everything at the best of times, and for most things its currently a lot smaller than it used to be.

Boston

Gurgle wrote: »

Theres a finite market for everything at the best of times, and for most things its currently a lot smaller than it used to be.

Exactly. Even in your best case scenerio whereby you introduce this new product and the work the manufacturing expands such that no one looses there job, the competition will have to make less money with the knock on effect that their staff loose their jobs. The only reason there's a moral dilemma here is because you know the people involved.