The Corporate gallows
Today, my Voodoo Manager zombies, I would like to share some personal insight. It is not too often that I get into personal stuff, but when I think it will raise some sort of awareness or provide me with some therapy, I do. So, looking at a role I previously worked, consider the following discussion;
When it looked like there would be layoffs, some of the Managers reacted harshly, including my immediate superior. The knee-jerk reaction of most was to “cut heads”. I proposed a reduced workweek to mirror the current income of the Company. On my plan, we reduced the workweek by 25% (4days x hrs) which allowed us to retain 100% of our employees with foresight into the possibility of business “pickup”. This was a brilliant plan and worked well until one of the contributing Managers “sold out” because he decided that he would like to get on the front end of avoiding his personal layoff by putting everyone else’s head on the seniority chopping block. A few months later, we laid off 250 people and I was one. But, no other Managers were caught in the layoffs, since it was seniority based.
Today, I worked through some of the Management salary numbers to determine if, fiscally, my role was the “best” one to eliminate. While I do not have the salaries of the Management staff, I do have the salaries of some of my peers and all of my reports. So, I was able to work on a “curve”, excluding bonuses to get average annualized estimates working through only one chain of command.
1 President earns $558,899
11 VPs who earn $328,764 (sum $3,616,404)
2 Directors who each earn $293,391 (sum $586,782)
1 Plant Mgr who earn $127,840
1 Department Mgr who earn $75,000
2 Supervisors who earn $44,000 (sum $88,000)
50 waged workers who earn $24,960 (sum $1,248,000)
Now, looking at these figures, I feel that it is readily identifiable that there were areas to cut some salary rather than eliminating jobs. Simply comparing the wages of the 250 laid off against the VP staff, the numbers are virtually identical. So, let’s assume that the only the positions listed above and the 150 layoffs had taken a 25% cut in salary, as I rolled out with my staff to save jobs…that would have saved the company about $40,419,231. But, I would think that a Senior VP would be willing to take on additional sacrifice, since we all hear the rhetoric about how valuable our employees are. Or, is it all lip service? None of the Supervisory, Management, Director, VP nor President staff took salary cuts of any type.
Employees hear it everyday…”we need you”, “great job”, “you’re gonna be a star”. So, weeding through the hype, how do you feel about your Company. Exactly how valued are you in your Company…really?!?
Categories: Business
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