Communication Consultancy as Buffer in the Downsizing Environment

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY A consistent managerial communication (MC) message, from top to bottom, is the best way to assuage the MC disconnect between managers and their workers. Transition services such as resume writing, networking, and enhanced interviewing techniques help ease the pain. These services help create a more positive image of the restructured company. Using a script and an outplacement communication consultant are good ways to diffuse feelings of anger, frustration, depression, and grief. Based on interviews with two executives experienced with downsizing and a review of related literature, we make three recommendations to managers currently engaged or those who plan to engage in downsizing their firms. Keywords: Consultants, Communication, Psychological contract, Downsizing, Betrayal, Frustration, Bitterness, Scripts INTRODUCTION When employees are terminated managers should not expect warm hugs and kisses in return. How displaced workers are treated during hard times can lead to panic, and their reactions often negatively impact the productivity of surviving employees (Ciancio, 2000; Pfeil, Setterberg, and O'Rourke, 2003). Even when announcements of impending doom are made, some employees hope for the best. General Motors, long after its 2005 "in-the-family" sales campaign ended, is still displacing thousands of workers with layoffs and prepackaged buyouts. Ford after a dramatic, but not unprecedented, decrease in its domestic market share in September 2006, announced its version of job cuts across the board (see Peter Drucker, 1954, who explains how Henry Ford Sr. attempted to manage without managers). The reality of a competitive global economy can trigger unanticipated earnings shortfalls, and inevitably managers downsize their organizations and displace employees as a short-term solution. Many managers rue over what they believe to be the only alternative to a company's demise. However, the danger in downsizing occurs when managers engage in unsystematic managerial communication (MC) approaches to displacing workers. How downsizing managers define MC is very important, too. Brown (1973) said, "communication is organization in action" (p. 53). In downsizing, managers should define MC to encompass the inevitable transmission necessities between source (manager) and receiver (targeted worker). In defining MC, Drucker (1974) committed an entire chapter, asserting the perceiver of the message always has expectations and any communication always makes demands. A communication gap must be recognized between groups in the organization. To Drucker, communication is largely made up of all the work on learning, memory, perception, and motivation. In essence, MC may not be dependent on information, but what may be purely shared experiences. It is not the means of the message, but the mode. Drucker also emphasized too much information can distort the communication effort, thus, widening the gap even more. This view on information overload is consistent with Katz and Kahn (1966) who offered a more comprehensive overview on overload, specifically stating how overload leads to errors and omissions. Scripts and transition services are useful MC tools. SCRIPTING A CONSISTENT DOWNSIZING MESSAGE Two scripts written in passive voice served a Sr. Director for a large Houston area organization in downsizing efforts as a clear and unambiguous MC message to targeted workers. The Sr. Director was advised by that organization's legal counsel to remain anonymous in this article, thus, we honored that request; in addition, transition services like resume writing, networking, and enhanced interviewing techniques helped Abbie Brothers ease the pain for targeted workers and interjected some degree of humanity into the downsizing process. The two executive experts were briefly interviewed, and they were adamant on one point: the downsizing MC message must be consistent from top to bottom. …