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  • Layoffs and Transparency

    By Dean Dad December 5, 2008 4:58 am

    Any thoughts on how to do the former while honoring the latter?

    The last time I went through a round of layoffs, during the previous recession, I saw vividly the gap between what could be communicated at a given moment, and what people actually wanted to know. Now there's another round coming, and it's likely to be much worse than before.

    There's some lead time, since the really catastrophic numbers apply to next fiscal year's budget (meaning the year that starts in July of 2009). We have a few months before anybody has to get the awful news. On the bright side, that means there's time to assemble and implement a reasonable strategy for communication, input, and brainstorming.

    In the corporate world, layoffs are established practice, and transparency doesn't exist. But academia is different. Here there's a focus on process as a good in itself. That can sometimes become a maddening exercise in narcissism, admittedly, but the idea behind it is basically good. It's about respecting the stakeholders at the college as people with real value and real ideas.

    With a storm of this magnitude approaching – and honestly, some sober and sane people around me who've been doing this for decades, and whose judgment I respect, are saying it's the worst they've ever seen – there's a real temptation to just lower your head, do what needs to be done, and be as unprovocative as possible in the interim. Given the way that some people react when given scary news, the temptation to keep them in the dark until the last possible moment is real.

    But I can't help but believe that it's better to be as open as we can be. The catch, as I learned in the last go-round, is that 'as open as we can be' doesn't tell people what they actually want to know, until it suddenly and cruelly does.

    Wise and worldly readers, I need any wisdom I can get. Have you seen layoffs handled with relative class? If so, how? Respond publicly, if you can, or privately to deandad (at) gmail (dot) com, if you'd rather not be public. There's a lot riding on this in the next few months, and not only here.

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Comments on Layoffs and Transparency

  • Transparency
  • Posted by Cheap Seats on December 5, 2008 at 11:05am EST

  • Dean Dad is certainly right that transparency is especially valuable during this economic disaster--and also right to note that its virtues are limited.

    Still, something is better than nothing. As an example of the latter, I offer my university which yesterday took two actions. The first was a series of budget cuts (hiring freezes and the like), clearly only a first step with worse news to come. The second was a letter to students offering more time to pay tuition and some advising help in budgeting for higher education--very modest steps, but perhaps not to be sneered at.

    So here's the difference. As a faculty member, I received a copy of the email sent to all students offering the extra time to pay and so on. I only happened to hear about the budget cuts from a friend who caught a mention on the local news.

    So this morning, I looked at the local newspaper which had a fairly good story on both. When I logged onto the university's home page and checked what qualified as "news," I found plenty about the letter to students and not a word about the budget cuts.

    I wonder when the letter from the president about the budget cuts might be arriving. Okay, I'm being sarcastic.

    This behavior mystifies me. The news isn't a secret and it would seem to make more sense to tell those of us more at risk than the average administrator what might be happening, how the decisions are being made, what procedures are in place, etc., etc.

    The concept of community is a strong one at most colleges and universities and sometimes, not always of course, has significant beneficial effects in a multitude of ways. More people than not are loyal to the community and will often do more than necessary, make sacrifices, and work to help each other and the institution.

    Truth and openness are really good ideas. Hiding one's head in the sand isn't one.

    But maybe I've got it wrong, another attack my incurable naivete. Maybe the reason the bad news isn't on the website is that it's none of my business. Maybe my betters really think they are my betters and see no reason to inform, much less consult, the rest of us.

    Cheap Seats

    Cheap Seats

  • Layoffs and transparency
  • Posted by Jeffrey Klausman on December 5, 2008 at 12:40pm EST

  • Our president has scheduled two all-campus meetings to present the economic news and to present the ideas being considered to respond plus the means by which these ideas will be considered (by whom, how, and when). Layoffs are inevitable and the president discussed in general where they were likely to occur first (part-time hourly support) and later (cutting reassign time for full-time faculty, which means fewer classes for adjunct faculty, which means adjuncts with the least seniority go first), assessing programs according to demand and need, etc. We're not through this yet, but transparency has begun from the first day--a letter via email from the president reporting what she had learned from the governor. So, transparency is transparency from the beginning--in knowledge and decision making. Sounds simple, I know, but tough to do.

  • transparency works if the burden is shared equally
  • Posted by Ingolf Gruen on December 5, 2008 at 1:55pm EST

  • If you want your faculty and staff to continue respecting you during these hard times, you should always go with as much transparency as possible. People understand that administrators cannot print money and have to sometimes make hard and painful decisions. But if the decisions are proper (e.g. who gets cut, who stays, who gets what kind of raise - yeah, some peple do get raises even during the worst economic times) and well explained, i.e. people know how the decisions come about, they usually understand (there is always some grumbling of course), and they will respect you for it. What does not work, which I have seen all too often from our administration is that virtually all the cuts happen at the department level, where faculty have greater teaching loads (see the one comment above), but there is virtually no weeding out among the administration because, of course, every single administrator is essential in running this fine institution. If it EVER happens that two administrative positions are combined then it is splashed all over the news how efficient our administration is becoming - of course nobody ever mentions that due to all the budget cuts handed down to departments over the yeasr, we are now working with about 1/3 of the faculty that we had 10 years ago but with larger student number and even higher expectations to bring in grant money that pays indirect costs. Sorry, but if there are budget cuts and lay-offs they need to affect ALL units of an organizations. Freezing all hires, and then exempting the "associate dean - type hires" because they are more critical to the mission of the institution than the assistant/associate professor hires will never gain you friends among the faculty. But that is why so many administrators want as little transparency as they can get away with and "stick their head in the sand", because they cannot actually defend how all the administartive positions are critical and the teaching and research positions are not. Seen it too many times to put much trust in univerity administration to try to fairly divide the pain. BTW, our football coach last week received a 35% salary increase (about $3/4 Million MORE!) at the same time when the rest of the univesity was told that there is a total hiring freeze and to prepare ourselves for a 10-15% budget cut - what gives???

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