When what happens at work becomes a life and death affair

France Telecom’s deputy CEO resigned yesterday after considerable criticism of the company over its handling of a spate of suicides by its employees.

There has been a worrying number of suicides by employees in France Telecom. More than 20 of them over the last 18 months. While suicides are often triggered by a complex set of issues, work related stress seems to have been a major cause of them.

Its an incredibly sad story , but a reflection of the modern day work environment. France Telecom has been brutally restructuring. Some 20,000 people have lost their jobs in the last three years. Sudden staff transfers from one place to another seems to have been regular. The management culture also does not seem to have been supportive.

Painful decisions involving the staff have become inevitable in modern day business. In the sanitized environment of the boardroom, the decision appears logical. Tough choices have to be made. The staff affected become a faceless mass and often just a number. But, on the ground, each and every individual affected is a human being. With a warm heart beating. These decisions made thousands of miles away and which the individual affected can barely understand the logic of, have enormous impacts on the lives of people and their families. Unfortunately, for a few, like what has happened in France Telecom, it ends in a suicide.

There is a huge need for support for people being affected by the turmoils in the business world. Companies have an obligation to help their people by arranging for support. Tough decisions are probably unavoidable, but the least a company can do is to offer support, help and advice – not the standard rubbish companies do to fulfill the minimum statutory obligations. Sending a termination notice by email, must be made an offence punishable by imprisonment. Support and help groups are probably needed manifold to be able to stand by pained souls in their hour of need. If we are to call ourselves a civilized society, that is.

Imagine this scene at a meeting in one of France Telecom’s offices last month. In a management meeting, in full view of his colleagues, a man in his 50s stabbed himself. Fortunately he was immediately rushed to hospital and survived. But what must be driving a normal man to do something like this ?

Managers of the world, think about this. Next time painful decisions are made affecting people, remember this incident. Your hard decision may be inevitable, but can you do it in the softest manner possible. Or do you want to have blood on your hands ?

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A CEO with a head and a heart

Paul Levy is the CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. Just like everybody else, the hospital is hurting from the downturn. Things came to a stage where they had to shed 600 jobs. Ouch ! But nothing special - this is what every organisation is going through.

But Paul Levy's reaction was different. He called a town hall meeting. What happened in that meeting was something different. Read about it here in Kevin Cullen's excellent report in the Boston Globe.

Paul Levy could not bear to let 600 of his technicians, secretaries, administrators, therapists, nurses, the people who are the heart and soul of any hospital, go without a fight. He knew they would hurt and so would their families. Getting another job today would be impossible for most. But ,equally, he could not just do nothing. So he enlisted the whole hospital to join the fight.

Find savings. The better paid employees would sacrifice a little to enable the others have a job. People would take pay cuts. The whole hospital has come together as one. From the most junior person to the CEO. They'll cut costs. They'll all share the pain. But they won't let a fellow worker lose her job, without giving it everything they've got.

Thus far, they have found savings to retain 450 jobs. One week to go and another 150 to be saved.

Paul Levy is a regular blogger. Click here to read his blog. Its a great read.

Readers of this blog would know that I am a strong advocate of job losses being the absolute last option. I have posted before on this - click here to read the post.

The Beth Israel Deaconess Medical center is a place with a fantastic team spirit. Its because Paul Levy and his team have demonstrated that hey have a head for business and a heart for the people they touch. I would be proud to work for such a place.

Won't you ?

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No Layoffs --- Ever !

I came across an interesting article today, from which I stole the title of this post. Click here to read the article.

The article listed 9 American companies that have never had layoffs, ever. They range from $ 11bn turnover Devon Energy to smaller enterprises. One of them has been in business for 81 years. Reading through the list, I noticed some trends.

Many of them are privately owned and do not have to bear the tyranny of quarterly results. Most of them are extremely conservative – neither flashy growth nor steep falls; just steady chugging on. All of them are supremely devoted to their employees. The phrase that caught my eye was “If you a do a good job, you’ll always have a job”. All of them communicate very openly and share the pain during bad times. One employee’s statement summed it all ; “It's an honor and pleasure to work for a company that considers you a valuable individual." Wouldn’t you die to have a workforce like that ?

These days, unfortunately, people losing jobs is all too common news. In China it is estimated that a staggering 20m workers lost their jobs. Half a million Americans have lost their jobs each of the last 2 months. The story is being repeated in most countries.

This lead to me to muse as to whether such scale of job losses are really warranted. Its seems almost a macho thing these days to announce huge job losses – somehow the market interprets this as real action being taken to cut costs. Sure costs have to be shed to stay afloat in choppy waters, but I argue that layoffs should be near the bottom of the cost cutting measures rather than at the top.

The mere threat of job losses is enough to send employee performance spiraling downwards. At a time, when you need dedicated concerted action to ride the downturn, a distracted , fearful workforce is hardly likely to rally together. In other walks of life, disasters bring people together. In business, that rarely seems to happen – you get thrown overboard or you desert the ship. Company cultures are lost in an instant when massive layoffs happen. When the upturn happens again, you emerge a weaker , anaemic organization.

It is one of the most degrading of events to an individual to be laid off for no fault of his. If you are a poor performer, sure, you deserve the boot. But if you were a star performer yesterday, and suddenly you are redundant, that’s a sickening blow in the stomach.

This post simply raises the issue – its too complex an issue to analyse in one post. Perhaps, in a later post, I’ll muse on what might be alternatives.

Most companies, if not all, claim that employees are their most important and precious assets. Really ?

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