A hiring freeze or natural attritio

A hiring freeze or natural attrition is slow to take effect but avoids the pain of layoffs.∙ Early-retirement packages may unfortunately induce the best employees to leave and may be slow to implement; however, they, too, are less painful than layoffs.∙ Retraining can improve the organization’s overall pool of human resources and maintain high morale, but it is relatively slow and costly.∙ To avoid a labor shortage, requiring overtime is the easiest and fastest strategy, which can easily be changed if conditions change. However, overtime may exhaust workers and can hurt morale.∙ Using temporary employees and outsourcing do not build an in-house pool of talent, but they quickly and easily modify staffing levels.∙ Transferring and retraining employees require investment of time and money, but can enhance the quality of the organization’s human resources; however, this may backfire if a labor surplus develops.