Minneapolis based company Target Corporation is quickly spiraling downward with no sign of stopping. The multi billion-dollar corporation has lost large amounts money, customers and now employees in the recent months. Said to be the second largest discount retailer in the United States (behind Walmart), Target has been known to be a stable and reliable company since it’s 1962 opening in Roseville, Minn.

That is until recent months as Target has gone through multiple misfortunes including a security breach that affected nearly 110 million customers. As a well-developed company, Target needs to have more control over mishaps that greatly impact their customers and cause them to lose money. Target’s national headquarters are in Minneapolis, Minn. and employs thousands of Minnesotans throughout the state.

On Jan. 23 Target announced that they will be laying off nearly 500 employees that work in their corporate office, this adds onto the already 150 employees that were laid off in October 2013 and not filling the 700 open positions that the company currently has. In addition laid off employees said that Target plans to replace them by outsourcing theses jobs to India or other lower cost contractors.

By doing this Target is putting their bottom line over their loyal employees economic needs and the resulting impact on the regional economy that supported the company’s historical success. As a result of this change, Target may lose sales from lack of customer support due to a negative customer experience when dealing with outsourced company representatives.

In a effort to cut costs, Target will be discontinuing healthcare to their part time employees starting April 1. In a letter sent out by Target’s Executive Vice President of Human Resources, Jodee Kozlak stated that, “The launch of Health Insurance Marketplaces provides new options for health care coverage that we believe our part-time team members may prefer. In fact, by offering them insurance, we could actually disqualify many of them from being eligible for newly available subsidies that could reduce their overall health insurance expense.”

Claiming that part time employees will eventually benefit from the huge adjustment. While Target claims they are making the decision for the good of their part time employees, the reality is it will end of costing the employees more out of pocket to get health care. So even though it looks like service to employees, Target is trying to cut costs in every way starting with the well-being of its employees. Between laying off hundreds and cutting coverage to thousands, Target employees are getting the downfall of the companies irresponsible management of money.

The need to cut costs came from a security breach that the national corporation experienced Nov. 27 to Dec. 15 when 40 million customers had their credit card and debit card information stolen along with names, phone numbers and addresses that could make the customers more susceptible to identity theft. Target announced less than a week later that they believed an additional 70 million customers may have had their information stolen as well, which resulted in Target stock to drop greatly along with the loss of consumer confidence in a trusted company. Identity security is a huge worry for companies and consumers throughout the world. Large corporations like Target must allocate the appropriate resources and expertise to ensure that they are doing everything technically possible to protect their customer’s personal information at all times. While data may be secure in computer, it was ignorant for the company to overlook the possibility of theft from card scanners at checkout that are accessible to the public in a commercial space. If Target wants to rebuild consumer confidence as well as their company, extreme actions are going to have to be put into place so ‘mishaps’ like these do not happen again. While cutting costs in a situation like this is not ideal to employees, Target needs to prioritize through the company and market to decide the necessary measures to rebuild the company and regain consumer confidence in the Minnesota-based corporation.