Response Letter
First of all I want to thank for the great effort you have taken in sitting down and penning this letter down. You have managed to note down your honest feelings and beliefs about the functioning and management of the company and personally being a huge believer in the freedom of expression, I must commend you on that.
Moving on to the real issue, I am of the opinion that as much as you are accurate in some of your assertions about the company’s undertakings and the management style, there are conspicuous instances where you are inaccurate. I have absolutely no reservations about the extent of commitment to the company that you and your compatriots have, but commitment is not something that is simply expressed in words. Your actions have to show this commitment and to be quite honest; this has not been the trend in the company. The company’s profits have been dwindling and one of the major contributing factors to this has been the relatively laid back approach to the performance of duties by the employees. This can be attributed to the job security associated with their jobs. The employees have been performing at substandard levels due to the understanding that their jobs are secure. I am an advocate of firing people. I believe that there are better ways to solve problems but I also believe it is the natural responsibility of every employee to abide by the terms of his contract with the company and perform his duties fully.
I am a firm believer in change and therefore when you say that this is close to impossible, I have a huge inclination to disregard your comments. I however understand the reservations that you and your colleagues may have about some of the changes that I am planning to effect in the company. I want to take this opportunity to first of all assure you that none of you us going to lose their jobs. In addition, I would like to assure you that the policies and the strategies that I plan to implement are for the general well being of the company and it is not something that I came up with overnight.
I would like to correct you on your view of my approach as high handedness and categorically state that just like everyone else who has the company’s best interest at heart, I am simply trying to adopt the approach that will most probably work.
I would also like to address one of your claims about being bound in chains by the management. I am personally not aware of this bit as the new C.E.O of the company be rest I assured that I will conduct thorough investigations into the management’s former dealings and interactions with the workforce and make amends where necessary.
I would like the cooperation of you and your colleagues in enacting progress in this company but for us to do that, we must first of all put away our differences. I regards to this, I am going to organize a meeting of all the organizations stakeholders’ representatives where we shall discuss critical issues and come up with a compromise and from there, we can move forward.
I hope that my reply will help to clarify some of your fears about the new company initiative and I hope that we can move forward from this instance.
The most striking bad news that I have delivered in my life is when I had to fire an employee who works in my father’s car wash. The establishment had being going through some financial hard times and my father thought that one of the strategies in which we could effect to turn around this situation was by laying off some workers. I was not supportive of this decision but since it was old man’s business and I was simply the acting HR manager, I had to perform my duty. I was very devastated in delivering the news particularly to one of the employees who was the sole breadwinner of his family. The fact that I had to do it face to face did not help to make the situation any better. To effectively deliver the message in a way that would not be hurting to the employee, I made sure that I used very polite language and also made the employee aware of the factors behind the decision to lay off some of the workers. I did not just lay off the employee, but I had also made arrangements with some other companies for them to be interviewed and this particularly helped to alleviate the situation. Luckily for me, the employee fully understood and my methods seemed to have worked.
The most difficult bad news I have received in my professional life
The most difficult bad news I have received in my professional life is when I was informed by my employer that I was being demoted to a lower position in the company because of “below average performances”. The news was a huge blow to me because I had been actively working up towards climbing up the company’s hierarchy. The manager called me to his office and first informed me that the management had been monitoring my progress for the past few months and they were not impressed. They had come to the conclusion that the best way to motivate me was to start from a lower position and make my way up. I was particularly not impressed with the manner the situation was handled and if anything it only left me feeling worse. I felt that the message delivery strategies were not appropriate and successful and the management could have done better to handle the situation.
References
Korotov, Konstantin., Muller, Urs. & Schafer, Ulf. 2009. Do you really think we are so stupid? A letter to the CEO of Deutsche Telekom (A). ESMT 2 European School of Management and Technology. Aug 21, 2009(Revision date: Nov 27, 2012).
Swift, Marvin H. 1973. Clear Writing Means Clear Thinking MeansHarvard Business Review. Jan 01, 1973.
Donahue, Kristen B. 2001. Misused Words and Other Writing Gaffes: A Manager's Primer. Harvard Business Publishing Newsletters. Nov 01, 2001.
