So you get rid of your most productive workers and wonder why things are not going so well. Maybe Circuit City should outsource all their sales jobs to India to save even more money before they shut the doors for good.
I went in last month fully intending to walk out with a big screen plasma TV, and after a half hour of no one speaking to me, I walked back out empty-handed.
A very good friend of mine is a mid-level manager in a public sector agency (he works for the state). While getting ready to counsel a lackluster employee one day, he ran cost/benefit analyses on the employee in question, and then on other employees, ones who were doing well. The results intrigued him, so he expanded the study to a large subset of the people who report to him.
He found that, without fail, his highest-paid people provided the best return for their salary...and not just overall, but on a per-dollar basis too.
I told him "Good. Those people are where you want to invest your payroll dollars."
He started as though something had struck him. "You're right," he finally said.
What they did was fire all of the commission sales people and hire hourly workers that know almost nothing about how to sell or the products.
What they lost was the sales the good salespeople closed that would have walked otherwise.
That's a fine summary of a common business management practice.
What's truly amazing is the number of managers who still collect a paycheck (and often bonuses) after implementing it, since it is a recipe for disaster.
Better idea: out-source the pointy-haired executives that made this bone-head decision. (It's like something straight out of a Dilbert cartoon!)