The next time a company’s leader decides to transmit a missive to employees, it should be better to check with an assistant to determine if it’s been done correctly.
As oilpatch layoffs mount, downsizing with dignity is becoming a challenge
There’s no good way to lose your job, but there are certainly bad ways.
As the stories of mass dismissals in the oil and gas sector circulate with each round of announced layoffs, complaints are emerging of staff being told to be in their offices at 8 a.m. sharp with the door closed. They are able to then wait an hour or two for “the knock.” That point in employment purgatory lasts until human resources staff have finished their sombre rounds.
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If not, as Pat Walsh chief executive of Mackie Research Capital discovered, all sorts of problems ensue.
This week Walsh sent an interior email to some staff, underneath the subject line “Please visit the attached.” The attached was titled: Review of Capital Markets: Personnel Changes. A short while later another missive was sent requesting the email be recalled.
Of course at that time it was too late, as word of restructuring plans had been read and analyzed. But there is only one problem: The e-mail was read almost a week before it was said to be released. The personnel changes are “effective by Feb. 1, 2016,” it said.
One employee termed it “a complete PR disaster. It’s been badly handled.”
And given the state of the investment business and the tough slog that the independents face, the alterations at Mackie Research are extensive. The firm is planning cuts in research, sales/trading and investment banking C as well as cuts to compensation. The fate of two research associates is in the balance – Associate 1 and Associate 2 are now being terminated. Information on some employees’ compensation seemed to be disclosed
So what went down when the proverbial cat was from the bag?
Mackie Research didn’t wait. Some of the affected employees were “walked out immediately.” Notices to some of the others are being drafted.
One employee said the firm “is while trying to fix this by contacting the people and providing them with their documents. But the damage continues to be done.”
Geoff Whitlam, president of Mackie Research said “we made some minor tweaks, but we’ve been adding staff.”
RBS and heeding its very own advice
Two weeks back the Royal Bank of Scotland achieved considerable notoriety when it advised its clients to brace for any “cataclysmic year” and a global deflationary crisis.
The bank, which received a comprehensive 45 billion bail out of the British government within the wake of the global financial crisis, recommended that its clients “sell everything except top quality bonds. This is about return of capital, not return on capital. In a crowded hall, exit doors are small,” it said inside a observe that attracted global interest.
While RBS’s view was one of the most extreme to become issued at the start of 2016, it isn’t immediately clear whether the bank included itself when it was advising clients on action to take.
This week, RBS which over the past couple of years seemed to operate on the basis of never missing a pothole whether it could, was at it again with more not so good news C a few weeks before it releases its 2015 results.
The bank has opted to create aside one more 3.6 billion awaiting a hit to its total net assets. The charge represents a mix bag of activities including “pension accounting change and other pension related movements;” and potential litigation associated with U.S. mortgage backed securities. One report said the news and the “combined expected impact” was a surprise.
The news was delivered after the shares hit a six-month low.
In the interests of its shareholders, maybe RBS, that has lost money within the last seven years, can use its very own advice.
bcritchley@nationalpost.com
