John Bax is General Manager at Tryact HRD Netherlands and Romania. With 19-years experience in the field, he is a noted international consultant, trainer and coach in human resources development.

Wall-Street: Considering the financial crisis, what do you believe the evolution within the human resources market will be over the next six months?

This financial crisis, pretty unique in its kind this time, triggers the coming of an economic recession. Even the rumors of this recession will inevitably make companies postpone investments, and investments in human resources will not be excluded. I believe that in the next six months the human resources market will increasingly suffer from this development.

Wall-Street: In your opinion, will the job cuts increase or we have already reached the tipping point here?

Personally I think that the job cuts will increase as long as no signs of economic recovery occur. And I don’t expect big signs of recovery in the next half year, especially because of the fundamental changes needed to treat this financial crisis, which is, to state it again, pretty unique in its kind.

Wall-Street: Some managers said they were planning to cut training budgets, extra benefits, or utility costs. Do you believe managers should keep their budgets for training?

Basically, I don’t believe in cutting cost just for the sake of cutting cost. And when this cutting of the cost is triggered by RUMORS of an approaching economic crisis, I even consider it pretty naive. I believe in well-thought investments in good times as well as in bad times. In good times you should build reserves for the bad times, and in this way avoiding having to cut cost in vital investments when times get rough, which will lead to even higher cost or losses on a midterm range. If you have no money, you cannot spend any. But if you do have