Read the article below and say whether these statements are true (T) or false (F)

Identify the part of the article that gives this information.

1 Companies use computer technology to decide who they should lire as much as they do to decide who to recruit these days.

2 It is better to leave decisions about which employees to make redundant to managers, who know their employees better.

3 E-firing software can save companies a great deal of time and money.

A During a period of restructuring or downsizing, a company can easily lose key staff if it doesn't take steps to identify them and ensure that they will stay with (he company.

5 E-firing software can be combined with a number of other web applications to make the redundancy selection process more effective.

6 One of the ways of deciding which employees should go is to first work out which employees you should keep.

7 Mergers between companies which have thought about which employees they should keep early on in the process have been more successful than those which haven't.

Computer says: 'You're fired'

by Joia Shillingford

A While many companies have adopted e-recruitment techniques - for example posting jobs on the web - the benefits of e-firing are known to fewer businesses. The practice may sound very unpleas­ant, but - as many who have worked in a shrinking organisation might agree - software could hardly do a worse job than some managers.

ВE-firing software is particularly help­ful to managements in the event of a merger or acquisition (M&A), where part of the logic of the deal is that the combined businesses will need fewer staff.

С By using software, the process can be speeded up so that the best staff do not leave while uncertainty hangs over the business. To illustrate, a one-month delay in working out which jobs to cut could reduce expected cost savings of $500m a year by more than $ 150m.

D But delays are common because of the difficulty and emotion involved in deciding who should stay and who should go. That is why human-resources software is increasingly being used to help businesses align financial and organisational objectives in situations in which they need to get rid of employees. These include merg­ers and acquisitions, redeployments, reductions and ordinary terminations. By linking to other business applications, such as payroll and the human-resources database, this type of software can put all the important data in one place for senior managers to analyse.

E Samantha Hanson, Vice-President of Human Resources at Vurv, a company which produces this type of software, says: 'Before we introduced this soft­ware, every time I went through a restructuring process, the Chief Finan­cial Officer had his or her spreadsheets, human resources had theirs and the legal department were looking at another one! Moreover, when the Chief so Executive changed the amount of money he wanted to save, the figures had to be calculated again, and it was very difficult to get all the spreadsheets to match up.'

FBut this type of software enables merger candidates to set up a hypo­thetical event, such as a merger or acquisition, and a goal, such as how much they want to reduce the headcount by. Or what skills they want to end up with in the combined business. You can look at your work­force in a variety of ways including: performance, pay, age, geography or business unit.

G Equally, you can look at a combina­tion of factors, such as sales by business unit, length of service or the success of applicants hired by one particular recruiter. In this way, you can see very quickly what it will cost to close a whole unit and if it will disproportion­ately affect a group of employees such as women or ethnic minorities, which could lead to legal cases or an unbal­anced workforce.

H However, this type of software does not simply deal with reducing the headcount; it also helps to identify top so performers or employees suitable for retraining. In a recent study of 40 M&A deals, it was found that in 15 deals classified as 'successful', nearly every company which took over a business identified key employees for retention during due diligence (the process by which companies verify that the intended purchase is viable) or within 30 days of the announcement. In marked contrast, this only happened in one third of the 'unsuccessful' deals.

READING

Diversity: Women make progress in climbing through the ranks

Read the article below and say whether these statements are true (T) or false (F). Identify the part of the article that gives this information.

1 Professional services firms have been worried about the lack of men in senior positions for years.

2 Consulting firms are not interested in changing that situation.

3 The number of women in senior positions in consulting firms is growing rapidly.

4 There is a business rationale for helping women to stay in the workforce once a company has spent time and money training them.

5 The traditional workforce base is now too small for companies' needs.

6 Clients do not like female consultants to work part-time.