Novo cut 13,000 jobs. It only decided 9,000 of them.

Capacity can leave a firm without anybody deciding it should go. Novo has cut 13,000 jobs over the past year, and about 4,000 of them were never announced as cuts at all. Outsource Accelerator reported the figures from the company's investor day in London. A spokesperson said most of that second wave came from natural attrition and seats left unfilled.

Out of a workforce of 78,400, the announced round was 9,000. Denmark carried 5,000 of those. Headcount now sits at a reduced level. Chief Executive Mike Doustdar used the same day to promise a larger company, and the shares fell as much as 7% that morning.

What attrition leaves behind

Attrition leaves no list behind it. A layoff produces one: somebody writes down which roles go, which stay, and who picks up the rest. Miserable document, and still a document. Attrition writes nothing down, so the work spreads across whoever sits nearest and the seat closes months later. An unfilled seat is a cut with nothing on the record.

Nobody signed for it.

The brief nobody can write

The brief is the first thing to go missing. Leaving a seat open is the cheapest move any operator has: no severance, no announcement, and the saving lands in the same month. A partner who does it once and watches nothing break is right to do it again. But the work did not resign. It got absorbed, and absorbed work is priced as a salary removed rather than as billable hours consumed.

This is where the wheels fall off. A firm that hands intake or document production to a provider can write a scope, because the role still exists on paper. A firm whose capacity drained out one resignation at a time has no scope to hand anybody. A provider needs a seat to staff, and a residue is not one.

I would take a bad job spec over no job spec, every time.