In times of crisis, the "young and the wild" can be taken over at low risk, highly motivated, and at favorable terms and conditions. This would come very close to the original meaning of the phrase “quick win”.

The impact of severance settlements runs in the same vein as that of any other means of reducing personnel. Changing jobs during a time of crisis entails a high trial period risk. A suitability for the free labor market does not exist for many employees, especially in peripheral regions. Only very few have realistic chances of finding a new position and are happy to take advantage of the severance settlement offer. Once again, these people are generally the repositories of company know-how and are dynamic and flexible employees ready to perform at a high level. Not only do the cost reductions fail to achieve any lasting effects, they are in fact counterproductive. That is why severance settlements should not be included among the standard instruments for cutting back on jobs.

Reduction of overhead and support services reduces the added value of key personnel

The optimization of resources in overhead processes can fundamentally be viewed as a sensible step to take. During growth phases, overhead and redundant work content increase at a rapid pace. But the reduction of support processes is a two-edged sword. It is not cost-efficient to reduce secretarial support and the aid of assistants to highly paid specialists for preparatory or follow-up work, for example. Account managers should ideally spend about 20% of their time on strategic and tactical procedures and personal qualification measures, 70% for direct customer activities, and merely 10% on reporting, controlling, and other internal tasks. The assignment of project-related tasks without target-specific orientation such as work groups, workshops, and reorganization to key employees must be reduced to the minimum required as part of corporate strategy. The reality is exactly the opposite: a maximum of 5% of working time goes to strategic deliberation and up to 60% is lost to administrative processes which are not related to the core and customer processes. In the ideal scheme, twice as much core performance can be carried out as in reality – 35% to 70% core performance. What is needed here is a meaningful division of tasks between support and core processes, e.g., sales assistance for customer visits, and good coordination with the demands of the overhead processes, e.g., reporting requirements.