There are confirmed reports that IT budgets in a number of industries in the US and UK, have been nearly halved. A number of Indians in the US have been sent back, after project cancellations, lay-offs etc. Recent survey from Reuters has also proved the recession that we all are going to witness. The report also says that unlike the previous one, which lasted for just 8 months, this one is expected to last longer.

Global recession is possibly hitting every industry and possibly every human sole on this planet but the IT industry is the biggest victim of this crisis. Due to this recession, most of the organizations are applying innovative ways to cut their costs. Reducing man power (lay-offs) is one the ways to cut your cost (Although I don’t agree with this).

Till now Project managers were using their people management skills to retain good resources in their team but these days they have a different kind of challenge. Now they need a skill, using which they can ask their people to leave without creating a strong impact on the people who are left with them.

Yesterday was one of the toughest and saddest day of my entire career as a project manager. I was asked to sack 5 people from my team. I was clueless that how I’ll handle this situation. In these 5-6 people, couple of them had been working for last 5-6 years with me. You can imagine that how tough it was be for me.

I was always thought that I have skills for managing people but honestly speaking. But none of my skills helped me to tackle this situation, I don’t how I did it and what will be the impact of this on rest of the people.

Since this recession is going to be their for a while in the IT industry and most of the project mangers will have to go through similar situation.

Don’t you guys think that it is the right time to introduce a new skill for project managers so that they can handle such situations.