Job cuts and restructures can leave employees hurting. Here’s how to rebuild their trust
When a restructure hits your company, HR can face a major headache trying to retain staff trust while overseeing change and letting employees go.
Shaking up the way you’ve always operated can be detrimental to your culture – but it also means an opportunity for a reset as you look to your organization’s future.
That’s exactly the challenge Tania Caza faced when Woodbine Entertainment got news of government funding cuts in 2012, which prompted a major downsizing in 2013.
“We had to do a reset as an organization, and restrategize, and we decided at that time it would be a good opportunity for us to take a look at everything,” the senior vice-president of people experience tells HRD.
“It was identified that our culture had a lot of work, because we’d gone through a lot of recent trauma … We knew we had a massive culture shift to undertake.”
But that couldn’t be done by HR alone.
Caza and her team know it was crucial to involve employees in the process of identifying Woodbine’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats as it re-established its mission, vision, values and beliefs, and identified what its new culture should be.
Through workshops in 2014, the HR team received feedback on employees’ vision for the company – including a desire to be one of Canada’s best workplaces, which led to Woodbine joining Great Places to Work.
The process hasn’t always been a simple one, Caza says.
“It’s an ongoing evolution. First and foremost, it’s change. People who love change and who are excited about the future and really understand that and are aligned to the direction are all on board with this – those are our early adopters, they’re all over this, they’re our champions, they’re pushing forward. They’ve been awesome,” she says.
“Then we’ve slowly been converting that next group of people who are supportive of the organization but really unsure of exactly what’s happening.”
Three years on, “a good portion” of that group have bought into Woodbine’s new direction, and they’re proud to be a part of it.
“We know not everyone’s going to be suited to the direction of the organization. What we’ve been spending time doing over the last couple of years is letting people know this is real, because there were quite a few people who were like ‘oh you know, just sit tight, it’s gonna pass, it’s the flavour of the day’... and now in the third year on this journey, they’re starting to see that’s actually the case.”
Related stories:
Remote work? No thanks, top talent says
Is your brand image scaring away talent?
Shaking up the way you’ve always operated can be detrimental to your culture – but it also means an opportunity for a reset as you look to your organization’s future.
That’s exactly the challenge Tania Caza faced when Woodbine Entertainment got news of government funding cuts in 2012, which prompted a major downsizing in 2013.
“We had to do a reset as an organization, and restrategize, and we decided at that time it would be a good opportunity for us to take a look at everything,” the senior vice-president of people experience tells HRD.
“It was identified that our culture had a lot of work, because we’d gone through a lot of recent trauma … We knew we had a massive culture shift to undertake.”
But that couldn’t be done by HR alone.
Caza and her team know it was crucial to involve employees in the process of identifying Woodbine’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats as it re-established its mission, vision, values and beliefs, and identified what its new culture should be.
Through workshops in 2014, the HR team received feedback on employees’ vision for the company – including a desire to be one of Canada’s best workplaces, which led to Woodbine joining Great Places to Work.
The process hasn’t always been a simple one, Caza says.
“It’s an ongoing evolution. First and foremost, it’s change. People who love change and who are excited about the future and really understand that and are aligned to the direction are all on board with this – those are our early adopters, they’re all over this, they’re our champions, they’re pushing forward. They’ve been awesome,” she says.
“Then we’ve slowly been converting that next group of people who are supportive of the organization but really unsure of exactly what’s happening.”
Three years on, “a good portion” of that group have bought into Woodbine’s new direction, and they’re proud to be a part of it.
“We know not everyone’s going to be suited to the direction of the organization. What we’ve been spending time doing over the last couple of years is letting people know this is real, because there were quite a few people who were like ‘oh you know, just sit tight, it’s gonna pass, it’s the flavour of the day’... and now in the third year on this journey, they’re starting to see that’s actually the case.”
Related stories:
Remote work? No thanks, top talent says
Is your brand image scaring away talent?
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