Rallying the Troops

t's almost too corny to be true.

When an inspection at Red River Army Depot-one of the nation's major defense bases-goes well, Col. Richard Hall declares: "Time to celebrate!" Sometimes the employees chant "Red River." Other times, they just hug.

"Walking up and saying to someone, 'I think you did a great job,' is one thing," says Hall, a military man not traditionally inclined to gush over good workers. "But to say, 'I want to give you a hug,' that's great. We recognize there is a certain degree of emotion everyone brings to the table and emotion is a productive force if appropriately channeled."

How Donahue-esqe, how touchy-feely. How new-age management. And how strange to see so much spirit among military employees who have survived two wrenching phases of downsizing yet still face an uncertain future.

Thousands of federal managers charged with restructuring their agencies must now motivate the survivors-employees left behind after colleagues transferred out, took buy-outs, got laid off or retired. While the government's focus has been on how to downsize and help those displaced, little attention has been paid to the survivors, whose well-being is crucial to each agency's future success.

To be productive after a major shake-up, survivors must grieve the loss of their colleagues and feel that managers handled the downsizing fairly. They need reassurance that their jobs are secure-at least for the time being. And they need training to develop new skills to tackle the challenges of a changed workplace.

Why do workers at Red River rejoice while most other survivors moan and groan about their future?

Part of the reason is that these born-again government enthusiasts went through the HEARTS (Honesty, Ethics, Accountability, Respect, Trust and Support) Training Course, which challenged them to go beyond their boundaries, trust co-workers and work together. Why shouldn't they be thrilled? They are learning new skills, leading work teams, challenging government rules and making decisions about the depot's future.

And yet they all know they could get pink slips someday.

"Over the past three years," says Hall, "some people have evolved from being introverts who used to say, 'I'm going to take care of my job and not contribute to a team process,' to become cheerleaders and players in the marketing of the depot." Everyone at the depot is taking the HEARTS training, a classroom and outdoor program adopted from Saturn Corp., the automobile manufacturer.

In the process, the Red River depot has reduced its layer of supervisors from six to two, formed over 100 self-managed teams, cut regulations nearly in half and empowered its employees.

Hall recognized the importance of paying attention to survivors. But managers are often reluctant to confront problems with those left behind. A 1987 study by Joan Alveras and Arnold Figeri that appeared in Training and Development Journal found that most corporate executives don't believe counseling employees who remain is necessary and argue that getting rid of "dead wood" should enable the organization to work better with less.

Ignoring survivors needs is a mistake, says Mitchell Marks, a downsizing consultant and author of From Turmoil to Triumph (Lexington Books, 1994), an analysis of corporate restructuring efforts. "You need to acknowledge that the change is painful," he says. "People who came to work in government were expecting security and the notion of downsizing threatens that. . . . Educate them that these are difficult events and all organizations are going through them."

Corporations are pros at restructuring. A 1994 survey by the Wyatt Co. and Fortune magazine showed that 86 percent of the 4,500 largest companies in the U.S. had downsized during the previous five years and expected to do so again. Experts now believe that downsizing is a natural, positive stage in an organization's development.

The federal government is just now beginning to streamline. If its executives want employees to work hard and well during a downsizing effort, they must learn to manage the transition effectively-that is, know what to do before the restructuring plan is announced, when the ax falls and after the dust settles.

Serving Survivors

Survivors of downsizing often feel angry about how cutbacks are handled-but at the same time guilty that they still have jobs.

"People tend to feel survivors' guilt when colleagues leave," says Michael Shahnasarian, Executive Director of Career Consultants of America. "They also think, 'It could have been me just as easily.' There is tremendous amount of anxiety, apprehension and mistrust."

Tom Schmitz, a former manager at the Interstate Commerce Commission's Office of Economics, recalls the stress level in his office days after reductions-in-force (RIFs) were announced. "It was demoralizing to look a person in the eye and know he was a dead man," he said.

Morale plummeted further when displaced employees visiting the agency's outplacement service wandered into their old offices. "They'd walk up here, right back in everybody's face, spreading rumors and sour grapes. We almost had fights. People were saying, 'Get out of here. Leave. You're killing us. You're too sad.' "

It's bad enough that survivors miss the way things used to be. But they also get stuck with more work-some of which they may feel unqualified to do-and fear they'll get fired if they can't handle the load.

Because downsizing plans are often focused on reducing head counts rather than on an analysis of human resources needs, organizations often let the wrong people go. According to a 1993 survey by the Conference Board, a nonprofit organization that conducts research on business, about 20 percent of 353 downsized organizations lost the wrong people because attrition did not prompt the poorest performers to leave.

Survivors have to pick up the pieces. The survey showed that over 30 percent of organizations increased their use of overtime to make up for the loss of manpower and skill imbalance after downsizing.

Survivors' "jobs change dramatically," says Norman LaCharite, principal management analyst with Star Mountain Inc., which recently helped the National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA) conduct a study on effective downsizing. "Major functions are being realigned and people are going from one place to another. People are confused about what they should be doing.

"In most cases, there is little communication. Several organizations are moving to a team approach, [but] managers don't know how to handle team leader positions, [and] people in teams don't know how to respond to team leaders who are no longer supervisors but still have to do performance reviews. . . . Shifting to a team approach requires establishment of new relationships and these are not clear up front."

The result is decreasing productivity. Employees come to work later, take more time off and, in some cases, quit. A 1993 Wyatt Co. survey on corporate restructuring showed that only 22 percent of the firms that downsized between 1986 and 1991 increased productivity.

One reason is low morale and lack of commitment on the part of survivors. More than 60 percent of firms in the Conference Board study said low morale among retained employees was a major problem.

Communication

How survivors feel about being left behind is largely determined by how they think downsizing was handled. If managers keep their doors closed, come out only to announce layoffs and don't extend help to those let go, the message they've sent to survivors is grim: They'll get the same treatment when their time comes.

An employee of the Department of Health and Human Services who asked not to be identified said last fall that she and her colleagues were wasting a lot of time debating whether the rumors they've heard about the agency's restructuring plan are true. None of them really knew. But they didn't feel motivated to do anything else.

"We are not getting any direction from higher-ups," she said. "And the official communiques that do come down are so synthesized, distilled and sanitized they don't tell you anything other than what you had read in the newspaper three weeks ago. There is a sense of being cut off. What comes with that is a feeling that they don't care about your life."

Keeping everyone informed about organizational changes is crucial in gaining the respect and commitment of survivors and ensuring high morale after the dust settles.

The NAPA report on downsizing recommends that agencies develop up-front communications plans to provide formal and informal channels for information to downsizing planners, employees and customers. The 1993 Wyatt study showed that 4 in 10 companies didn't develop a communication strategy to support their restructuring efforts, even though executives indicated in a survey two years earlier that such strategies would help get support for restructuring.

The Agriculture Department's Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), which recently lost 1,400 employees through buyouts and attrition, publishes a weekly newsletter with updates on restructuring, operates an 800 number with pre-recorded messages updating the status of reorganization plans and sends out e-mail. The agency surveyed employees to see how they wanted to get the information.

"Some wanted face-to-face meetings," says T.K. Brown, the National Performance Review coordinator for NRCS. "In our organization that's sometimes hard to do since we have tiny offices in remote areas. We said we'd try to have face-to-face meetings but also back those up with other methods of communication."

Randy Harris, a mid-level manager with the Energy Department's Office of Environmental Management, operates a "rumor control" fax machine. Staffers can fax in rumors, which are investigated and clarified via messages on an electronic bulletin board. Says Harris: "We get questions like, 'Is such-and-such office going to be abolished? Or will it just be renamed and we'll be moving everyone over?' "

Support

When the ax comes down, survivors also get wounded. But they need more than band aids to pull through and keep working well.

A study by Daniel Feldman and Carrie R. Leana that appeared in the summer 1994 issue of Human Resource Management on better practices in managing layoffs spells out how Duracell Inc., implemented a plan to motivate the survivors of two restructuring efforts. The program's goal: Increase information exchange, rebuild commitment and provide ongoing support.

First, key senior managers who were to remain with Duracell led group sessions to help employees understand the nature and extent of restructuring and to assure survivors they still had jobs. Each employee then spoke to a career counselor to evaluate the impact of the upcoming changes on their work and on future career options. Everyone was also offered support services and told of benefits given to colleagues who were laid off.

Over the two days after layoffs were announced, survivors met in groups with senior management representatives to talk about their feelings, grieve over the loss of displaced colleagues and discuss their concerns about the future of the company. Top managers made a point of continuing to see survivors regularly thereafter and human resource managers offered counseling. A follow-up meeting with survivors two months later was held to clear up unresolved issues and assess progress.

The results: Only two survivors left the company and productivity levels were maintained.

Sometimes restructuring wipes out entire operations or offices. But morale is still affected when reorganization plans offer employees options to transfer to a different location or switch jobs.

Stephen Freeman, deputy director for human resources with the Defense Finance and Accounting Service, anticipates that some employees will opt to stay with the agency as the plans to consolidate its 300 small field offices into just 20 over five years are gradually unveiled. As each consolidation is disclosed, he sends a team of people to the closing office to explain to each employee their options and offer counseling.

Employees are offered the option of working at an office in their commuting area if openings exist, moving to where the work is being shifted or requesting a transfer to another location. The agency gives employees six months notice on the closing of locations. Most agencies give only 120 days' notice.

"The challenge," says Freeman, was to get enough experienced employees into the new offices to make start-up go smoothly and to retain as many people at closing offices as long as possible."

"We figured . . . we'd give people more than they are entitled to," he says. "We found that by going in early and talking honestly and making offers, whether they took them or not, it boosted morale. They thought that we cared about what happened to them. It wasn't the e-mail-on-Friday approach."

Retraining

To be productive in their "new" agencies, survivors need to adjust to a changing workplace. Vice President Al Gore's vision of reinventing government mandates that federal workers think differently, do their jobs differently and have different expectations.

Federal bureaucrats who stick to their job descriptions, move up the ranks, stay in the same agency all their lives and then retire are becoming creatures of the past. Tomorrow's federal workers will be self-starters-aggressive professionals who'll move in and out of different jobs and acquire new skills they can market elsewhere.

But today's federal workers are still somewhere in between.

"The biggest complaint managers have about long-term government employees is that they . . . feel entitled to good pay, benefits and security," says Shahnasarian. "Managers should challenge the notion openly. [The should] foster the perception that career development is a joint responsibility, that no longer do we have a paternalistic organization that will take care of you.

"We are talking about a whole new way of career development in government," he adds. Managers, he argues, should emphasize that the organization will provide resources-such as training, tuition reimbursements and rotational assignment opportunities-but it's up to the employee to keep up his or her skills.

Once they are trained to break out of the rank-and-file mentality, survivors usually become more hopeful, seeing new opportunities for personal growth and a better future for their agencies. An employee from DOE's Office of Environmental Management who attended a "Change Summit" held in Denver last year stopped Harris, one of the event's organizers, in the hall and asked him for his autograph.

"Nobody asked me for an autograph before," says Harris, who had been asked to join a "Change Gang" to "spread the virus of change" through the agency. "Another person said we changed his life. That person was always one to go with the flow and then sit around the water fountain and complain about it. Then he was in a staff meeting and they were proposing a rehash of the old management-control approach. He said, 'This doesn't make sense.' Everyone talked about it and realized he was right."

At the summit, nearly 200 participants examined what drew them to government, learned to work in teams, developed leadership skills and examined their own goals. Slides of taxpayers were shown throughout the event and participants tried to explain to "Aunt Emma"-a fictitious retired schoolteacher in Montana-the mission of their agency.

They also learned to challenge the status quo. And that "has a huge affect on morale," says Harris, who, along with other mid-level managers, has formed a partnership with the Council for Excellence in Government to study downsizing practices in the private sector. "All of a sudden people are not cogs in the wheel of a big machine. They feel ownership. What could improve morale more than making them feel they are part of the solution, rather than some sheep moving along?"

The Team Solution

Many companies that have downsized, however, have not taken steps to give their surviving employees a sense of ownership. Fewer than half of the companies in the Wyatt study involved their managers and employees in the restructuring process through task forces, project teams and employee focus groups.

Employee participation through self-managed teams is what made Red River Depot's restructuring so successful. "Our input made a difference in how the changes were accepted," says Christy Skinner, who became manager of the accounting team at Red River, her first leadership role after 17 years of working at the base.

She knows she could lose her job at some point-but that's not what she focuses on. "If I worry about that now I couldn't function as well at my job," she says. "When the downsizing effort hit there was fear and insecurity. . . . Now we have a feeling that it will be [properly] handled. We'll trust our people who had the same training [we had] to do the right thing."

Employees may love self-managed teams. But do managers like giving up their power?

Often, managers thrown into teams can't handle being equal partners with former subordinates. Ex-bosses who can't adapt often drag the team down with cynicism, disrupting any progress and worsening morale.

John Turner, administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration's Central Region, says that nearly half of first-line supervisors have a hard time adapting to teams. "People strive for years to become supervisors," he says. "All of a sudden we are changing the rules. It derails their career path."

Sometimes, Turner reassigns disgruntled supervisors to other teams, or gives them new "special assistant" jobs. "Each individual is different," he says. "One solution doesn't work."

Another way to deal with displaced supervisors, says Harris, is to let them rewrite their job descriptions. "We had 75 people who were no longer supervisors," he says. "We brought them in with a personnel specialist and gave them first cut at writing what their new positions would be. If you do too much for them up front they won't feel they are important to the process."

Whatever the approach, managing the survivors of downsizing constructively is central to the continued success of federal agencies. Federal managers increasingly are turning to the private sector-which started downsizing in the late 1970s-for models on how to boost survivors' morale while making massive organizational changes at the same time.

While there is no cookie-cutter approach to motivating survivors, there are steps managers can take to alleviate the pain, confusion and anxiety employees feel as they cope with the knowledge that their world is changing: Keep workers constantly updated on reorganization plans, provide support for them when their colleagues leave and train them so they can be better equipped to create the "common sense government" that Vice President Gore has promised the American public.