Are Microsoft’s Voluntary Buyouts a Sign of What’s to Come?

On October 26, Microsoft offered voluntary buyout packages to 60,000 employees—one quarter of its global workforce. It’s part of a growing trend of profitable companies taking dramatic steps to cut labor costs, but the tool—voluntary buyouts—is hardly new. Wayne Cascio, now a Distinguished University Professor Emeritus at the University of Colorado Denver, has been studying how companies downsize workers since the 1990s, when he wrote the book Responsible Restructuring: Creative and Profitable Alternatives to Layoffs.