As we look ahead and to position us for success in 2009, we’re continuing the work already underway to get fit as an organization: actively looking for ways to make process and structural changes to our business that will allow us to work more efficiently, with more scale. we’ve enlisted the help of Bain & Co. to work with the leadership team on identifying ways to leverage our strengths, and to improve and accelerate our performance.”

– Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang, Sept. 24, 2008

The new fitness program to which Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang referred in his last all-hands memo to employees is expected to begin Tuesday. Yahoo (YHOO) is to report quarterly earnings tomorrow and it will announce layoffs along with them. Sources tell The Mercury News that the company is planning to sack at least as many employees as it did in January, when it fired 1,000 of its 15,000 workers. That’s not the 3,000 to 3,500 number that had been rumored, as Boomtown foretold. But it’s ugly nonetheless. The cuts will likely be accompanied by a 15 percent reduction in operating budget. Clearly, those Bain & Company “personal trainers” Yahoo recently hired to help it trim down and shape up are already working their magic.

as we look ahead and to position us for success in 2009, we’re continuing the work already underway to get fit as an organization: actively looking for ways to make process and structural changes to our business that will allow us to work more efficiently, with more scale. we’ve enlisted the help of Bain & Co. to work with the leadership team on identifying ways to leverage our strengths, and to improve and accelerate our performance.”

As Valleywag notes, Yang doesn’t come right out and say “layoffs” or “restructuring,” but it’s evident to anyone who’s read a “corporate rightsizing” announcement that this is what he means by “getting fit as an organization.” Unless Richard Simmons has a new, unpublicized gig at Bain.

As Boomtown noted earlier today, cuts at Yahoo are a question of “when,” not “if.” And the answer, obviously, is “soon,” though Yahoo spokesman Brad Williams insists it would be premature to speculate about layoffs at the company. Said Williams, “Yahoo has been exploring ways to streamline our processes and bring new agility and efficiency to how we work as an organization.”

Streamline? Odd choice of words for a flack spinning this story. Doesn’t he know that it’s on The Grand List of Asinine Corporate Layoff Euphemisms as well?