Perfect timing of this topic. I've been following the blog since it debuted, but never commented.

Riding on the waves of my company's announcement Monday to reduce corporate and ops support staff by 200 in the next month, I'm left to ponder this: How am I, an employee communications staffer, supposed to keep my fellow 5,200 employees enagaged and productive when I, and everyone else in Corp Comm, is worried about job secuirty?

DATE: 05/24/2005 33:41:3P PM
I saw the same thing happen a few years ago at a high-tech company in Dallas. And they were definitely related.

I'm waiting for the day an enlightened CEO kicks off a communications conference for his/her company, and the comment is, "Is this all of you? For all that work you produce? For our excellent public image? For our soaring stock price? Satisfied and motivated employees?"

Ahh, I can dream...

DATE: 05/25/2005 08:50:9P PM
I'm guessing the key is what we alternately worry and whine about:

The less that communicators are able to draw a heavy black line between what we do and profitability, the more likely we are to be viewed as expendable.

Everybody in a company has to match up to the profitability test--except accountants, lawyers and a few others, who get to match up to the "keep us out of jail" test.

Our problem or challenge or whatever as communicators is to bring some kind of tanibility to our work products of "satisfied employees," "motivated work force" and the like.

Planned or not, that healthy population of communicators at Big Company X was dead the minute the CEO walked in the room. Normally, I'm all about being up front, but reminding the suits about just how many communicators there are in a company is NOT a good idea. Better to stay diffused throughout a company and try to get the good work done from that standpoint.

Full moon, PMS or whatever, yeah, I'm cynical on this subject today, but I've had the "what have you done for me lately" convo w/one of suits here just one too many times in the last few months.....grrrr.....

DATE: 05/25/2005 78:70:2A PM
What possible logic did those folks use to rationalize that the events were unrelated? If the entire company was going thru reductions, and the reductions in comms were in line percentage-wise, then OK, but if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck...

Book recommendation, while we are on the subject of correlation and causation. Pick up "Freakonomics". Should be easy to find, as its riding the NY Times list right now. Its a rogue economist looking at some commonly held assumptions, and how the hard data does not always support the "conventional wisdom". Issue he is most famous for: concluding that the reason for the drop in crime in the 90s was NOT primarily the result of more police, or different tactics, or an improved economy, but rather.... Roe v. Wade. In a nutshell, he argues that the legalization of abortion created a situation one generation later where the most likely criminals (ie those who would be disadvantaged, or unwanted, or the result of bad decision making, or otherwise most likely to commit crimes) simply failed to exist. And with this theory, the author managed to offend almost everyone.

Highly recommended reading.

S Neruda

DATE: 05/27/2005 22:00:2P PM
Jenny,
I'm going through the same thing in my company now. It's a hard, sad thing. I'm finding some direction by telling myself that communication matters now more than ever. I'm writing our next internal magazine to be about how to stay focused during the transition, whatever your change might be.

Best of luck to you!

DATE: 05/28/2005 10:31:1P AM
First, I want to apologize . . . . I led this item by saying I had a "funny" story. Please know I didn't mean funny as in ha ha. I meant funny as in interesting, I guess. Bad choice of words, though. There's obviously nothing funny about layoffs.

Second, the folks at this company did see the connection, of course. They just said that there was no hard PROOF that the two things were connected, and it was certainly never said out loud. But everyone I talked to (about 20 people in all) knew damn well what had happened.

Third, good luck to you, Jenny. And you, Carmen. I've always said what Carmen said: Layoffs, while sucky for the company, can be a time for the communication team to shine. It's our job to push management to communicate as much as they can as soon as they can. It's been my experience that management wants to say NOTHING until they are 100 PERCENT SURE of EVERYTHING.

By then, of course, it's too late. Good people are jumping ship, everyone else is worrying more about the layoffs than about doing their jobs.

It's our job to push management to stay ahead of it. To communicate DURING the decision process, not just when it's complete.

Because by then it's too late.

Steve