A Scary Make or Break Moment from Management

It is a scary time.  Companies are laying off hordes of employees.  Businesses are closing.  Sales are down.

Now is not the time to scare off those employees you’d like to keep around.

Your boss calls and says “I need you to be available for a conference call with the entire sales force next Monday to talk about the state of the company.  Think you can make it?”

What is your first thought?  Are you feeling warm and fuzzy?  I don’t think so.

So you call your buddies on the sales force and spend countless hours debating what the call could be about.

You spend the weekend looking over your personal finances – what can you cut out?  Maybe you even update your resume because who knows what will be said on the call.  How productive are you in the days that follow the request leading up to the actual call?  Not very.

Are we loosing our job?

Will commissions be cut?

Are they stopping our health plan – eliminating the travel reimbursement?   What could it be???

How many companies are calling conferences just like this and putting their employees through stressful anxiety?

Management just wanted to give you a heads up so you didn’t book an appointment, not realizing the pure h-e-double tooth picks they would be putting you through.

So how did this particular call go?

“This call is to talk about the state of the company and the economy.  I don’t have any agenda.  Any questions?”

After a few brave souls opened the discussion it turned out that the company was doing fine even though sales were down and the boss had no intention of making any cuts.  Whew!

I asked one of the members of the call if it had ever occurred to him that the call would go that way?

“No,” he said.  “It never occured to me that the purpose of the call was to reassure us.  The way the call was scheduled and with the economy and the automotive industry the way it is, I just assumed the call was about cutbacks of some kind.”

So how could that situation have been handled differently?

1.  If you need to give your employees significant notice before having a conference call, give them a scoop of the call or at least anticipate what their greatest fear might be and reassure them: “Although we’ll be talking about the state of the company, there won’t be any position eliminations or major cuts announced.”

2.  As management, prepare for the call by thinking through what questions your staff may wish to ask but may hesitate because of the venue.  Formulate answers and lead the call by saying: “Before I open it up to general questions, I have a few answers to the questions that I’m sure are on your minds.  Let me take a minute to answer those first.” 

3.  Offer to answer additional questions offline.  This boss did make that offer and it is a good way to allow people to ask questions they might be embarrassed or hesitant to ask in front of the group.

4.  Thank them for their efforts.  As a manager, you are only as productive as your sales team.  Make sure they know how much they are appreciated for without your sales team you are very likely without sales!

Conference calls and staff meetings about the state of the company are truly MAKE OR BREAK MOMENTS.  You have the opportunity to be honest, gain their trust and enlist their assistance with collectively being successful in the future.  Make sure you handle these moments with an understanding of how the information may be received by the employee.  Put yourself in their shoes. 

One last note – even the tiniest details matter.  When I worked for Pearle Vision we would frequently receive announcements or sale coupons in our pay envelopes.  One time the announcement came on pink paper.  People began to panic even before reading the notice (which was a dollar off coupon to a local establishment) believing they had received PINK SLIPS. 

THINK about the details before you DO.