Cost Cutting - have been told that a minimum of 25% of staff members should be removed

Thanks Mona,
I'm sure this will help me a lot and a sincere thanks to all the seniors who have shown me the path to walk on.
will update you all with result by end of the task assigned to me.
sagar

I have seen a lot of HR folks talk about 100% resource utilization, especially in depressed market conditions and definitely when cost cutting is being discussed. When Mona just commented on the same, it kinda triggered this question...

Does 100% utilization actually exist? Is it practically possible to have 100% resource utilization?

"Gather the employee data, their experience and qualification data, their profiles and grade them". And then what?

Sorry if i sound foolish and ignorant but just trying to understand the process of utilization identification that quite a few feel can be used to reduce staff. Let me explain where my confusion is. I have a internal audit person in my F& A team. In real terms his work is only for a week every quarter where he has to audit the systems and submit his report. If i were to do a utilization chart for him in mid of a quarter, he would be at 10 % utilization and if the same exercise is done in the first week of a quarter, his utilization would be above 100%. Now do i remove him or do i keep him ?

So my question is... How do you decide whom to let go? Do you decide based on what he is currently doing or what he does in terms of the critical nature of his role or his performance or his grades as per his senior's opinion or are there some other factors that decide it?

Incidentally have you noticed that in mid size / smaller organizations, the account / admin. departments are always quite over staffed but the management will never agree to it and you cant touch them...:-)

Dear Nkulsh,
I agree with your points. When we are talking about 100% utilization, it means to the maximum level.
By grading them and their profiles, we will have clear idea who is doing what during working hours. In our system, there are people doing multiple tasks and performing best in each work given! You can also choose the multi taskers to make a wise choice.
You mentioned about the auditor, you can not say good bye to the employees who are doing special and important job for you. Here we are talking about the number to be reduced from admin/ clerical/ marketing dept or the dept having more number of employees than required ideally.
Other way, lay off is a big task, you can not ask your employees/ under performers to leave immedietly. We should give 1 to 3 months time...

An internal audit team that is doing work for 1week in a month is definitely under utilised and a waste of money. In such a scenario, it would be better to have that function given over to an external firm that would do much better work.