Has the harsh financial climate , the year on year budget cuts and the service reductions made managers any better at giving bad news?
I had a colleague, a very out spoken member of the senior management team, opinionated on occasions abrasive who generally gave the impression of being rather fierce. It was as if he was always in a bad mood even when he wasn’t. He was very protective of his service and very unhappy about the cuts forced upon him. He was most angry about having to cut his senior management posts from 3 to 2. He simply couldn’t decide who should go. He kept putting off the decision or even telling the staff that one of them had to go. When they asked him directly he said no decision had yet been made.
Have you ever attended a large meeting to here a senior manager explain the budget position and its implication and at the end of the meeting still be no clearer about whether you had a job or not? I heard a senior manager addressing a group of residential care home staff about the need to make savings, the difficult choices, the desire to support vulnerable service users and how much he and his colleagues valued the work of staff. He talked about a process by which every member of staff would be seen by HR individually to discuss their options. He went on to say the organisation was committed to help staff find jobs. He asked staff to help reassure residents and their relatives through this difficult period and assure them that appropriate arrangements for their care would be made. At no point did he say the words” this home is closing” or” staff will be made redundant”. When asked” is this home closing will we have jobs?” He replied committee had not yet formerly decided. But will we lose are jobs they asked not “necessarily” he replied.
He knew that it was inevitable that this and other homes would be closed, he knew that there was no scope for redeployment and that most staff would be made redundant. He just didn’t want to tell them what they didn’t want to hear.
Of course this was not the right way to go about giving bad news but was it better than the manager who just sent out an email saying that if the budget was passed at the next meeting the following homes would close and staff made redundant see HR link for calculating redundancy entitlement.
Blair McPherson author of People management in a harsh financial climate published by Russell House www.blairmcpherson.co.uk
