From this post on Jeremy Wagstaff's Loose Wire:
MANKATO, Minn. — The top editor of The Free Press announced she would resign rather than cut newsroom jobs to meet budget targets.
On Tuesday, The Free Press reported the decision by editor Deb Flemming to leave the company on April 9 as part of a broader cost-cutting plan. She informed her staff on Monday.
"Clearly, my leaving kept additional folks in the newsroom,'' she said. "You need people to do the job. Without people, it will impact the quality of the product you give readers.''
Excerpt from this article on the Star Tribune.
What if, instead of cutting lower-level, front-line positions, managers in charge of cost-cutting were to evaluate their own salary instead? It's unfortunate how few stories we hear about managers firing themselves or, more realistically, taking a reduced salary to attempt to meet budget numbers.
In the immortal words of Paris Hilton -- "That's hot."
1 comment:
I did something similar once, a couple years ago during a layoff. Told I had to choose one or two people from my staff (which was already very, very shorthanded) who would be let go in a planned layoff that week, I asked the boss to give me a couple hours. They needed an answer that day.
I went to my office and started doing some math. I started charting out responsibiities and how duties were covered, along with related salaries and expenses. It came out about as I expected it would. I took it all back to the boss later that afternoon.
When I told him I had made my choices and brought along the documentation to cover it, he was glad. When I showed him I was the one who he needed to let go, he was shocked.
Dollar-for-dollar, in the real world, each member of my team was more critical for day-to-day operations than me. That much was clear. If I left, the operations would continue and the team would function properly - as a team.
It was also clear from our conversation that the company didn't see me as someone they could let go.
That was the day they saw the true value of each of the employees that worked for me. No one was laid off, one of those employees now runs the department, I'm doing new things with a new team at the company, and we all still work there today.
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