The UK's beleaguered workforce, having suffered the misery and disruption of last week's blizzards, now faces being hit by a double whammy of rapidly increasing job cuts and a squeeze on pay.
Quarterly CIPD research of employers' recruitment and redundancy plans, out this week, indicates that job prospects are deteriorating 'at an alarming rate' while the size of average pay rises is shrinking.
More than one in three employers plan to cut jobs in the first quarter of 2009 - double the proportion expecting to make cuts in the autumn. Those who plan pay reviews expect staff pay to increase on average by 2.6%, much lower than the 3.5% average increase reported by the previous survey. One in eight employers intend to freeze pay throughout 2009.
The axe is now falling on vital front-line workers such as police officers, so it's apparent that the public sector is not the safe haven many commentators believe it to be.
With official statistics released later this week likely to confirm that unemployment topped two million at the end of 2008, the labour market outlook is grimmer than the weather.
This week's issue is designed to help the HR community navigate a course through these tough times. Our article on alternatives to redundancy includes pointers as to what other options are open to employers to avoid job cuts.
However, if redundancies are sadly inevitable, then our Trade Secrets feature tells you how to target the right job cuts that can actually strengthen your organisation in the long-run.
