November 20, 1992
Dear Everyone:
The Phase II Study has been completed and the
Recommendations are in.
The Good News is: I
still have a job.
The Bad News is: I
still have to get up and go to work every morning.
And it's all
Subject-To-Change-Without-Notice-Of-Course.
Phase II (for those of you who haven't been paying
attention) is a part of the call to reduce Company's expenses by
$200,000,000.00, or 50¢ per “unit” of xxx, by the end of next year.
And, as any corporate executive
can tell you, the quickest way to cut costs is to cut people.
The purpose of Phase II was to
figure out the best ways and places to eliminate said people.
It boils down to this:
Corporate Staff (of which
“Administrivia and Placation” is part, and Records Management is part of
“Administrivia & Placation”) will eliminate 1400 jobs by about the
middle of next year. Of those,
400 will be passed out to the subsidiaries and operating companies in a
kind of, "Here, you want it, you pay for it yourself" package.
That leaves 1000, a nice round
sort of figure, making it relatively easy to cut along the dotted line.
Of the 1000, 550 people took the Special Temporary
Retirement Enhancement Package (STREP), leaving only 450 folks to be
eliminated. Of course, this
doesn't mean that they just axe the first 450 people who show up for
work Monday morning.
But before I explain the process (I know, I know,
you can't wait), perhaps I should explain some of the terminology that
is being bandied about.
Right-sizing.
Company isn't "cutting jobs", or
"downsizing", it's "right-sizing". Under
no circumstances should anyone assume from this that Company was
"wrong-sized" before. After all,
the number of upper executives hasn't changed "significantly", has it?
In fact, they just added a new
operating company called Company Services Company, of which Records
Management will be a small part, and that, perforce, means a new
president and miscellaneous vice-presidents.
(At Company, when in doubt, form
a new company.)
Surplus.
People don't lose their jobs,
they get "surplused". (Spell-Check
is going to have a field day with this Letter).
Note that a noun can, at any
time, become a verb without warning.
Personnel
Selection Committee. Also
known as God. These are the
people who try to match surplused people with open jobs.
Selection criteria are, "skills,
knowledge, experience and prior performance".
(Knowing the right people doesn't
hurt, either.)
Open Job.
Your job.
My job.
Anybody's job can be declared
"open", even if it is currently occupied by a warm body.
(Let's face it, in some cases,
that's all that's occupying
some of these jobs. This whole
thing isn't for nothing. With
some luck, we could come out ahead in this.)
Redeployment
Pool. When you get
"surplused", you go into the Redeployment Pool.
You can stay in the Pool for up
to six months, treading water, so to speak, until you get picked for
another job. However, if they
can't find work for you to do while you're in the Pool, if there's
nothing you can do to earn
your keep, you could get sucked down the drain at any time.
Redeployed.
What happens when you get pulled
out of the Pool. If you land
another job, you've been "redeployed". The
powers that be have proudly assured us that some 700 people have already
found new jobs through the Redeployment Process.
We look at each other and think,
"Great, that’s 700 jobs that are no longer available."
Gives a new meaning to the
expression, "Last person into the Pool is out of luck".
Dislocate.
Just about as painful as it
sounds. If you lose your job and
are lucky enough to get pulled out of the Redeployment Pool for a job in
another group, company or location, you've been "dislocated", even if
you're still living and working in the same part of the country as
before.
Transition.
Brace yourself, this is a
verb. It's what a
restructured group does, i.e., "Joe Blow will continue to work with (his
old group) to provide continuity while (his old group)
transitions to its revised operating organization."
Translation:
Joe's job was eliminated and Joe
got surplused. Then somebody
realized that Joe was the only one who knew what was going on in his old
group so, even though he's been redeployed into another group, he still
has to teach somebody at the old job how to do what he did that was so
unimportant that the job got axed.
Involuntary
Termination. End of the line.
If, after six months, you still
can't find work, you get 2 weeks salary for every year of service with
the company (minimum of 8 weeks and maximum of 70) and a chance to find
out how the Outplacement Program works. Also,
you can turn down a job offer that involves either a demotion or a
transfer to another part of the world
the first time and still stay
in the Pool. However, if you turn
down a second offer, you're involuntarily terminated.
Now, how does all this affect Records Management?
Well, as a group, we’re still on
the new-and-improved Organization Chart, but smaller.
Instead of 9 analysts, we have
only 6. But guess what?
3 of our analysts took the
Package (STREPped out) and that leaves us with 6, the magic number.
However, it is possible that some, or all, of those
6 jobs could be "opened", in which case it's everybody into the Pool.
Now, it just so happens that
there are other people swimming in the Pool who are just as qualified,
or even more so, to do our jobs as some of us are.
The Personnel Selection Committee
(God), goes through the Pool, looking for the
best 6 Records Management
analysts they can find. Those 6
get plucked out of the Pool pretty quickly and the rest start paddling
like crazy, looking for work to keep them afloat until "God" finds him
another job.
So, what to do in the meantime?
Brush up on your transferable job
skills…
… And your backstroke.
Love, as always,
Pete
PS. I'm on
vacation next week, so there won't be a Letter.
Everyone have a great
Thanksgiving!
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