Michael Dell spent the past 21 months cutting employees, slashing costs and reshaping Dell Inc. to make it more competitive in a changing personal-computer marketplace. Now, with a brutal economy forcing customers to cut back on technology spending, he's turning to his workers for more help.

In a memo Monday, Dell asked employees throughout the company to consider taking off as many as five days without pay over the next three months. In addition, he said, the company would institute a hiring freeze, scale back some projects, offer voluntary severance packages and cut many of its contract workers.

If those moves don't eliminate enough expense, he said, the company might conduct further layoffs.

The goal "is to address costs in creative ways, in a way that gives our employees more choices than perhaps have existed in the past," said David Frink, a company spokesman. "We're looking to use voluntary cost-reduction options whenever possible so fewer involuntary actions would be necessary."

Frink declined to comment on how far cost cuts would have to go, including how many employees would have to take furlough, to avoid further layoffs. "We've seen a slowdown in spending," Frink said Tuesday, "but the primary reason is to implement programs as further steps to those we've already been taking to better position Dell for long-term competitiveness."

Executives have said they will cut $3 billion in annual costs by early 2010, and they completed a layoff of 8,800 workers, about 10 percent of the company's global work force, earlier this year.

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