Bill Quirke
is managing director of Synopsis, a specialist internal communication consultancy whose clients include Astra
Zeneca, BP, Ericsson and Rolls-Royce. A regular speaker internationally, Quirke is the author of Making the
Connections – Using internal communication to turn strategy into action and Communicating
Corporate Change.
Andy Grove, co-founder of Intel Corporation, gave sound advice when he said, “The worse the news, the more effort should go into communicating it.”
While bad news for an organization can mean the multimillion-pound pay-off of a departing chief executive, bad news usually means bad news for employees.
However, there’s a wide range of different types of bad news:
- Closures – where particular locations, branches or plants are closed down.
- Headcount reductions, right-sizing and layoffs – where the number of people in the workforce are reduced, redistributed, transferred or outsourced.
- Downturn – where there’s a downturn in the market, an increase in competition or stagnation in the economy.
- Cancellation of orders or projects, a loss of clients or key accounts – usually with negative implications for people who’ve been working on them, or have expected to work on them.
- Resignations, particularly for senior management – or firings of senior management for poor performance, lack of cultural fit or unacceptable behavior.
Issues arising as a result of bad news
With all these different types of bad news come a wide range of issues:
- Uncertainty – not all the details are clear and it’s not even clear when they will be. There’s no agreed version of events, and issues which may affect the organization are outside its control.
- Confidentiality – there’s material information which can’t be disclosed, either because of agreement with commercial third parties, or because there’s a strict sequence of information and consultation as with unions, works councils, shareholders and regulators.
- Timing – there are interdependencies with other plans, a clash of timing with other changes, or there’s a need to consult with different stakeholders in sequence, which means uncertainty is likely to continue for some time.
- Leaks – grapevines are not only very active, they can be very accurate. With the rise of industry chat sites, and the extension of the grapevine from the water cooler to e-mail and chat room, the likelihood of keeping something quiet for too long is low.
- Divisiveness – some employees are likely to be more affected than others, and as rumors spread, employees can rapidly divide into different camps, with different views and very different emotional reactions. Dealing with such complex and emotionally charged situations can’t be done with a “one size fits all” approach. However, the following section offers some areas to consider whencommunicating bad news.
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