Study: German Managers Use Lay-offs to Cut Costs

While most European managers first cut salaries or slash marketing budgets to reduce costs, German executives prefer to use lay off workers, according to a new survey in the German daily Handelsblatt. According to the poll among 1,460 managers in Belgium, Netherlands, Italy, Spain, France, Germany and Britain, 60 percent of German managers fire people to get their finances in order. In France and Britain, only 38 and 39 percent of managers respectively said they considered lay-offs as a usefully cost-cutting device. German managers said they would consider marketing budget cuts as a second remedy. Only 16 percent of business leaders in Germany said they would cut their own salaries to save company money -- 26 percent of their British counterparts and 29 percent of Spanish managers on the other hand said they would be willing to take a pay cut.