There are sensible ways of achieving these cost savings.
1.Reducing personnel costs .
Try to keep who you've got. Recruitment is very expensive. (And you won't need as many HR staff... ).
2.Replace turnover with lower level employees.
When a senior developer leaves - through natural wastage, not redundancy programs, replace them with someone less senior who can be trained up.
3.Hire new college graduates every year.
All business should do this. Decent succession planning reduces the cost of recruitment.
4.Manage your contractors.
Make sure you don't have too many contractors. If a full time position is needed, then fill it with an employee - don't have a contractor on board for ten years.
6.Reduce staff turnover.
Recruitment is expensive! Training less so, but once you have experienced people, keep them.
7.Reducing non-personnel costs.
E.g. outsourcing office services. Make sure going through Purchasing actually reduces costs.
8.Virtualize servers by using containers.
Use new techologies appropriately.
Believe me - I am trying. I just heard from a colleague that my current role is changing and nobody bothered to tell me.
On the other hand there's people shouting about not mastering the local language, not enough integration, etc....all I know is I don't want to be that sad story in the newspaper about the perfectly integrated immigrant worried about the future in CH because the links with previous country(ies) were cut.
That is the stupidest suggestion of the lot. College graduates, on day 1, know absolutely nothing about your business but think they know everything. The learning curve is painful and for many is just too much hard work for them and too much expense for you.
Let someone else train them and bring them in when they have matured a little.
A little mercenary but necessary.
I'm 41, I know I still have time - but I'm not feeling too hopeful as my career thus far has been one setback after another not due to any fault of my own. I genuinely feel for those who are older, a shite state of affairs and I'll likely find myself there someday. It shouldn't be like this, constantly having to sit through reorg after reorg for corporations who rake in billions in profits.
Incidentally, most of the Swiss companies I was working for had their e-mail handled by Swiss companies with their servers on Swiss soil.
PS. I just laughed a lot this weekend when I realized that Rumansch is easier to read than Switzerdutsch.
Normal, les Vaudois are only Bernese people who speak French
Having had my role (having to remind myself it was not may job or me fired) being eliminated and geographically relocated to India as I approached 60 years old was not something I found easy.
I faced the prospect of having to leave Switzerland once I ran out of Chômage (RAV) and leaving my children behind
I count myself lucky because now I start a contract on the 1st Feb and I know I am going to do a great job and it will take me close to 63 years old and even if they do not hire me on a fixed contract I can haul it over the line to the 65 years old of retirement. (short version)
I have to say having provided for my -ex- and my children covering a period of almost three decades to face getting the you must leave Switzerland now somewhat an enlightening moment
I worry about my children how employment looks in the future, even though they are now all Swiss now which gives me some comfort, I do not see the world and the rapid change an easy one.
My advice to anyone where ever they are in Switzerland is invest in yourself and leverage every advantage you have, gain mastery in what you do and people will seek you out.
Wishing anyone who is facing a struggle at the moment positive vibes
1. Get rid of "dead wood". All IT departments have it, some more than you could imagine...
2. Instead of hiring expensive people, give the junior ones you have a career opportunity and they might do it for less while being super motivated and less likely to leave.
3. Have a healthy mix of experience levels, not the same guys sticking around for a decade.
4. It says MANAGE your contractors... if you dont, they manage themselves and that wont be cheap.
5. It literally says the opposite of your interpretation. Dont do stupid outsourcing.
6. Find out if there are other ways to motivate employees to stay than just CHF... for example flexible working models.
7. Nope, admin staff is still personnel costs. It basically means: "Do we really need an office in the most expensive part of the city for the IT guys?"
8. Virtualization does save costs. Not just at running a system but in every project. I know because I am in a commercial role at an IT services company. We used to have an easy 20% of project costs in the infrastructure bit of any project a decade ago... somebody coming in and screwing metal in a rack, wire it up, then another guy has to install basic software, patch the servers... all thats gone for good. And nobody misses it.
All in all not bad advice. At least they didnt recommend "hot desking" which has literally never worked outside an excel sheet.