June 20, 2006
Increasing Employee Cynicism
Why would you want to do that? Well obviously you wouldn’t intentionally want this to happen but it seems as though businesses are doing everything possible to reduce employee morale and productivity through their actions and communication.
It used to be that the person in an organization that employees trusted the most was their direct manager. This may still hold true, but the overall levels of trust seem to be declining to the point where the word “trust” should not be used to describe company/employee relationships. This is particularly true during times of significant change within an organization when the rumor mill fills the void left by sterile announcements from senior management.
I recently received a copy of an email that was distributed inside a Fortune 500 company about a pending restructure. It went as follows:
Dear Staffers:
We are continually leveraging synergies to provide low cost solutions to high volume problems that arise due to high overhead. As part of the solution to the problem, we continue to move to lower cost locations across the corporate footprint. I therefore have the following announcements to make:
1,592 jobs will move from our high cost site in Pensacola, FL to our great new low cost site in San Antonio, TX.
1,727 positions will be eliminated at our high cost site in Long Beach, CA to fuel growth in our great new low cost site in Pensacola, FL.
The entire Collections team will relocate from our low cost site in Manila to our even lower cost site on the floor of the Pacific Ocean.
To fuel our growth strategy, we are opening 11,400 branches in the poorest southern states to take advantage of low wages and to gain tax breaks and incentives from desperate state and local governments.
We will then close them all after one year and pocket the profits and incentives.
Together, we will march forward into the future! Please call me if you have any questions.
Is this a little dark humor to get through the day? Perhaps. Or is this an indictment of the quality of management decisions and the impact they have on the lives of employees?
In times of change, organizations often rely on the HR function to help manage the change process and employee communications. Unfortunately for this organization, a Senior HR person sent this email to his colleagues!
Not surprisingly, people are not completely engaged at work. Employees have no confidence in management and do not trust what they are being told. The rumor mill has more information and more accurate data than emails from management. Most employees are looking for new jobs, even in business units that are not being impacting by the restructuring. And the cost cutting has done nothing for the company’s share price.
What can be learned from this situation? Here are a few things to consider:
· Tell employees what you know when you know it. Don’t expect “confidential plans” to remain that way for long.
· Engage employees in creating the solution . . . even those that will be impacted by the changes. Employees are talking with one another about the quality of management decisions, what will work and what will fail miserably. Given that they are closest to the work, you might learn something from them that will help you make a better decision about making the change work.
· When senior management talks, say something of interest to employees. Please don’t insult their intelligence with double talk and vagaries that lead employees to distrust what management says and put more faith in rumor mill than management communication
· Mine the rumor mill. Management should be listening to what employees are hearing on the grapevine so that they can confirm or deny things that they know employees have heard . . . and management better tell the truth if they want to maintain their credibility. Employees may like the message but at least they will respect the messenger.
Posted by Greg Robinson at June 20, 2006 11:37 AM
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