Miss Management: Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean that nobody’s out to get you

February 11, 2010 | Galynn Nordstrom

If you watched President Obama's State of the Union address a few weeks back, you've no doubt noted that job creation is now at the forefront of the recession-busting strategies being formulated by government. A rational national healthcare industry is still being fought out in Washington, and if this proposed two-party summit actually takes place (and what I would not give to be physically present for that meeting, as a partyless but exceptionally pithy citizen), it may still bob to the surface again and create some actual change in what has become an unsustainable system. But a focus on job creation (or perhaps just job retention) is probably top of everyone's mind today, for both management and employees.

That is not to say, of course, that their concerns are equivalent in quality as well as in quantity. For most people in the workforce today, losing a job is a survival issue. For most businesses, laying off employees is a profit issue. While it is usually true that a business that makes no profits will not survive, it is not true that a business that makes lower profits won't. Personally, I can support our capitalist oligarchy only so far. That being said, it's rarely an either-or situation. And many businesses persist in regarding salaries as expenditures, rather than as investments.

We've written about this issue quite often in the Review over the last couple of years (for a quick sampling of published articles, just leap to the top of this page and type the word "workforce" into the search engine). In the article "Smooth operators" in our January issue, Globe Canvas Products' Kevin Kelly says "The most important consideration is to be willing to throw away the way you are doing things now." He was referring to operational issues specifically, but it's a mindset that should be especially critical when dealing with staffing issues, which do link directly to profit issues, if sometimes in unexpected ways.

A few months ago I was reading an interview with Clint Greenleaf, CEO of the Greenleaf Book Group, about "how to keep your staff and your bottom line intact." With about 30 full-time employees, he regards even one layoff as unacceptable. "Cutting one person from the team is losing one invaluable resource that helps make this entire company tick," he said. "In the short term, it's hurting morale and lowering the productivity of a department. In the long run it means the entire company's time and money is spent trying to make up for the loss-redistributing tasks and overburdening departments, struggling to make up the slack, dealing with the paperwork, and eventually putting additional man-hours toward rehiring and retraining. And, of course, the toll layoffs take on the economy is tremendous."

Greenleaf's solution: he asked his employees to institute what he calls the "lay-on," which essentially means putting in one voluntary extra hour per day at work. He explains it as "One extra hour to be used in the most advantageous way possible; finishing up projects, having a meeting with a client or vendor, assisting a co-worker, getting hands dirty working in another department. Even cleaning a desk or organizing files, if it helps improve efficiency." The system has worked for his company, resulting in greater productivity, increased profits and more reserves for tough times.

One definition of insanity is doing the same things repeatedly but expecting different results.

Not that doing things differently can't give you the same results-there are weeks when I buy Powerball tickets and weeks when I don't, and both techniques have ultimately resulted in my not having the money to start a winery and a competitive mass transit system for Minneapolis.

But I'd like to hear from companies in the specialty fabrics industry that have found creative ways to retain and retrain their employees to help create a jobfull recovery.

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