Reenergizing Employees After a Downsizing

This case will help you learn to evaluate and manage the consequences of significant organizational changes, like

downsizing. As the managing editor of a small newspaper, you'll be assisting the editor as she grapples with the

consequences of a recent layoff. The case will touch on both the immediate aftermath of the downsizing and also

on how work will need to be structured and reorganized going forward. After reading the case, you'll prepare a

report for your editor that will lay out the pluses and minuses of a number of potential action steps for reenergizing the paper's staff.

THE SITUATION

Andrea Zuckerman had been dreading this day for some time. As the editor in chief of the Blaze, she had been

aware of the impending downsizing for some time. But the Blaze is just a small, college$-$town newspaper$-$owned by

a large national conglomerate. So she had to hold her tongue while the corporate wheels turned. She didn't agree

with how the consultants hired by corporate had determined who would go$,$ which was largely determined by who

had the highest salaries. And she didn't agree with how the news was being delivered$-$not by her, but by a

consultant who would be a complete stranger to all involved. "They're taking away our wisest," she noted, "and

they're taking away those folks' dignity for good measure."

Not that Andrea could argue with the reasons behind the downsizing. She was, after all, working in a dying

industry. Every newspaper, from the New York Times and Washington Post down to the smallest paper in the

smallest town, had a sliver of the readership of a decade ago. First it was $24-$hour cable news, then the internet,

then smartphones. Each made newspapers less central to the current events consumption of the folks in a given

town. Corporate had tried to stay ahead of these trends when they bought the Blaze, an event that had been

marked by a smaller round of downsizing as costs were cut, the paper was scaled back, and Tuesday and

Wednesday deliveries were ended. But there had been hope associated with those changes, with everyone assuming

that corporate resources could help the Blaze reinvent itself and leverage new technologies to stay relevant.

This time around, the Blaze is confronting a "new normal." Its function moving forward will be to serve as a local

portal to the broader news resources offered by corporate. When folks in town log on to the Blaze using either

their web browser or their smartphone or tablet app, they'll see a combination of local stories written by Blaze staff

and national and world stories authored by staff at other papers under the corporate umbrella. Eventually, the

print version of the paper will be a weekend$-$only phenomenon, and even that will almost certainly end at some

point. All these changes mean that the paper will need fewer reporters, photographers, artists, and section editors,

not to mention fewer assistants. There may also need to be some restructuring and merging of assignments and

duties.

But that's getting ahend of things a hit. The first item that Andren wants to discuss in her meeting with you is what

to say to the staff at the morning briefing. As the survivors of a layoff that's being poorly handled, it'll be on her to

restore some semblance of morale. After all, the last thing the paper needs is its remaining staff giving two weeks'

notice. In fact, they're going to need to be more committed than ever because more is going to be asked of them

than when they were hired. She'll have to be somewhat careful with this speech, of course, as the HR person

installed by corporate$-$Jessie Vasquez$-$will no doubt remind her. Jessie is good at his job in many ways, even if

Andrea complains about his general level of risk aversion. Jessie's primary concerns will revolve around Andrea

snying something that could either trigger a wrongful termination suit or be used as ammunition if such a suit is

brought by a staffer agninst corporate.

The afternoon briefing is going to be more complieated. That's where Andrea hopes to begin charting a course

toward the "new normal" so that everyone understands what they'll be in for. The rumor mill has already been

working overtime, and many of the scenarios being floated might actually wind up being worse than the eventual

state of affnirs. So it's important to begin discussing the future look of the Blaze quickly, to crente some

information to go along with the misinformation. Of course, Andren doesn't want to make decisions about that

future course too quickly because nothing will undermine the staff's confidence more than a collection of faulty

ideas that gets revised a few months into its existence.

There are a lot of things to consider when contemplating the new operations of the Blaze. The paper has

historically grouped its functions into five areas: state, city, sports, lifestyle, and business. It seems to Andrea that

those five areas will need to get merged into two or three. The