You have been given two straightforward tasks. The tasks now require you to use your brains beyond the normal paperwork that you have been doing. You said you are here to learn, and at the first opportunity to do so, you want to change your job.
The owners have set a target of reducing 25% of corporate staff. They probably know where the business is heading, and in tough times, they know they have to cut overheads. In that, they are probably right. No head of department wants to do that since it brings more pressure on them, in some cases actually makes them work, brings down the morale of the employees, and exposes inefficiency (or lack thereof). Well, too bad. If the business needs to cut overheads, then corporate salary is the first place to start with as most of the unproductive cost is at corporate administration.
You are asked to compute the efficiency of each employee. So what's the problem? Start with each department, get an org chart, check who is wrong there. Check the work being done. Ask each employee from the lowest to the highest level what work they are doing and what volume is handled. You can get enough benchmarks for each task from the Internet. Check if the same work is being duplicated, if processes are wrong (use common sense). It does not need an MBA to figure out if processes need change.
From this, you will be able to figure out who is working efficiently, who is not, and what scope is there for removing people. Brief your management on your progress for each department. If you are doing it wrong, they will tell you. If you actually find that people are already overloaded and your analysis can bring it out, they will accept that and look for other avenues. If they still need jobs cut, they will do it anyway, and people will simply have to work harder and longer until the economy improves. Let's face it, a recession is on, and there are few options.
One suggestion, convince your management not to fire anyone until your analysis of all departments is over as it will hamper your work in the next department. Find out which processes can be streamlined by automation (look at CRM, DMS, ERP as options). By the way, you may find it's the head of department that needs to be removed.
I know of a company in the USA where during the recession (2007-2008), the board decided to remove all its top managers and let the next set of managers who were paid much lower take over. The company survived and is stronger at this time. The new managers were told this is the budget for your department. Reduce your manpower and cost. Some lowered headcount, others convinced the entire team to take salary cuts of 25%. If they didn't do it, I am not sure if they would have managed with sharply lower revenues and resulting losses that went on for four years. With cost cuts, they survived with close to breaking even.
As for process inefficiencies, I know of a TATA group company that 15 years ago discovered that they had 35 people matching interdepartment debit notes with interdepartment credit notes and reconciling them (and God knows how many man-hours were spent in having departments make debit notes and the other department make credit notes for the same work). The solution was simple: let the department who has done work for the other department make a debit note, get it signed by the receiving department, and hand it over to accounts to make an entry. The change was logical and common sense. It resulted in the reduction of 55 people in accounts.
(Moderator's note: I am not naming the company; it was 15 years ago, and no one cares since it is not current, and lastly, it's an acknowledged case study and in the public domain.)
So, Mr. Suraj, if you want to change your job, by all means, do so. If you think it's unsafe to work for a company retrenching people, change your job. But understand that at times, companies need to make hard decisions, and HR has to implement them. Simply because you are given a task that will result in 50 persons losing their job is not the reason to not do that work or to feel hurt that they threatened to fire you from the job if you fail.
If you have not done that work before, then it's time to learn something new. If you fail, then at least you tried. Most companies will appreciate the efforts unless you got the job projecting that you were capable of doing such an analysis, etc.
Lastly, if you can't do it, and your company management still needs it done, ask them to get in touch with me. My firm does a lot of work on profit planning, cost control, and efficiency. We can probably do it, albeit as a professional assignment.
Regards