If mandated layoffs leave too little time to transfer knowledge from departing staff, you'll have to be creative to find ways to buy more time. All … Yesterday’s Advice Line (“Laying off staff without losing too much knowledge,” 3/8/2009) was, I’m afraid, incomplete. I stand by the strategy I laid out for preserving institutional knowledge in the face of a 20% staffing cut (outsource the data center to provide the bulk of the savings, cut the one or two most replaceable applications staff members, and shift more responsibility for end-user support to business departments to allow a staff reduction there). I don’t stand by the timeline I implied, because there’s no way to successfully outsource even a small data center in the two weeks available to the CIO who asked my advice. Three months is more likely — aggressive, but feasible. The CIO needs to buy time, which means a visit to the executive suite, to gain buy-in for the notion that delaying layoffs a couple of months will greatly reduce the risk of a serious disruption to company operations. That might be all that’s needed to solve the timeline problem. If the company’s financial situation is so dire, or its political environment isn’t conducive to this solution, the alternative is a three-month across-the-board 20% reduction in pay for all IT staff. That pays for delaying the layoffs until after completion of the data center transition. If that isn’t feasible either, forget the data center outsource and go to Plan B instead: Layoff one more staff member than would otherwise be necessary to satisfy the 20% reduction. Use the funds this will free up to bring all laid-off staff members back as independent contractors for a month, to fairly compensate them for providing all necessary cross-training and documentation. There might even be enough left over to pay the remaining staff a small bonus to express appreciation for taking on the additional responsibilities. – Bob Technology Industry