Employee Relations Help Needed!

WITracy

We have had to cut three positions within our small, marketing firm (50 employees) with the third being yesterday. After each position elimination, a company e-mail was sent announcing the change and identifying the reason as financial cutbacks.

Naturally, people are scared & I believe we need to get some more information out to employees. The trouble is, there will be more positions cut over the next few months (& we are not in a position to announce this yet). So what is the best information to provide? We want to be honest but not get people anymore paniced than they already are. We also don't want to lose good people to the rumors that are flying right now.

Any suggestions on wording this?

jpepler

You state that you can't divulge the fact that more cuts are coming. I wouldn't recommend saying anything to the employees if you can't be honest with them. If you assure them that all is okay and them drop the axe again, you've lost all credibility. (It sounds to me like they have right to be panicked and probably should be seeking other employment.)

ritaanz

We had a series of 3 layoffs in 2000. We found that calling all the employees together for a general meeting worked much better than an email or a memo or a posting on the bulletin board.

We explained the financial situation and what it looked like for the future as best we could see it. Our people asked questions and we answered as honestly as we could. Many questions remained unanswered. One thing that I have to mention, our employees knew work was slow probably sooner than we did.