Tom’s World is in the entertainment/amusement park industry. We’ve had a difficult time given the pandemic because our customers are no longer allowed to go to our amusement parks which are located in various malls.  We have had to implement cost efficiency measures in order to better balance our savings and revenue, and insure our workforce that they will be okay.

I proposed to the executives and top management to implement temporary lay offs and work with a skeletal workforce. Unfortunately, we also had to consider retrenching some of our employees. Upon doing so, I myself had to look into legalities, and studied how these processes would impact our people. The top management has been open to the idea, but we didn’t jump straight into removing people, because we believe in the value of our workforce.

In implementing our temporary lay offs, the challenge was to figure out who exactly we would lay off. The bulk of our workforce is in operations which I am not directly involved with. I met with team leaders to emphasize that HR functions don’t stop with the HR department – once you are a leader and a people manager, you have that HR function in identifying who to lay off.

So we implemented these measures in compliance with the labor code of the Philippines and guidelines set by DTI. 100 employees have been temporarily laid off based on parameters such as job task, performance, and disciplinary action levels. Some of these employees volunteered to be laid off. Throughout the process, team leaders were responsible for the decisions made in their respective departments. We feel like the severance package we offered to these 100 employees was not enough because people don’t just need money, they need deeper connections and better opportunities, especially right now. We need to look out for the welfare of all our employees.