More than 40,000 employees have been laid off by U.S. organizations between December, 2007 (the official start of our current recession) and June, 2009, in an attempt by companies to cut costs, improve profits, and shore up shareholder value. However, it is ironic that studies conducted over the past 20 years have repeatedly reported that layoffs do not usually produce those results. Instead, these studies have reported time and again that less than 50% of the companies using downsizing as a cost cutting and profit increasing measure actually achieve that objective; in fact approximately 25% actually realize a decline in their overall profitability.