Layoff Announcement via Email

This past Monday, March 9, 2009, one of my former employers sent a company wide layoff announcement via email. Sadly some of my friends were impacted by this layoff. Given the state of the US economy we have all grown accustom to layoff news. It is happening everywhere, touching every industry; however, prior to this week Mercury Insurance Services, LLC, founded in 1962, had never resorted to layoffs. I could ask a lot of questions about this business decision, most of which are not answered in their press release. The one question that weighs on my mind is why did they choose to communicate this business decision via email?

Perhaps companies feel this is accepted email etiquette. For some companies, maybe. But you need to know that prior to mid 2002 90% of Mercury employees did not even have personal computers, they worked with dumb green terminals. That's right,no email, no word processing software, no internet access...they spent eight hours a day in their cubicles connecting to a mainframe to perform and produce their work product - underwriting policies or adjusting claims. In 2001 I was named the project manager to bring Mercury employees into the 21st century. One of the biggest project battles was convincing senior management that the employees should have and use email. I won the battle and this week I learned that senior management used email to announce a company wide layoff. What a difference seven years can make!

Generally technology is wonderful for the work environment, but have we technically progressed to the point that it is considered acceptable to deliver life altering news via a cold email? Let's remember that this startling news negatively impacted those who were not laid off, as well as those who were. I read an interesting article on this subject that I invite you to read: "Is There Such a Thing as a Good Layoff?"

Today I dedicate this blog post to all Mercury employees, those who were fired and those who were retained. In September 2004, when I resigned from Mercury I sent a good-bye letter to those whom I had worked with over my almost seven year tenure. And because I had managed many company wide projects this letter went to many employees. In that letter I shared the following thoughts, which ironically are still pertinent today:

---As I leave you, I tried to think of the best advice I could offer you as individuals and as a group. It came to me that what I have always tried to impart to you is to question each request as if your life depended on it. Do not be afraid to stand your ground for the betterment of your work ethic and the company. In other words, do the right thing. A few years ago, I saw a movie, "The Winslow Boy", and in the closing scene a defense attorney states: "I wept today because right had been done." When questioned by the defendant's sister, "Not justice?" to this the attorney replied, "No, not justice. Right. Easy to do 'justice'. Very hard to do 'right'."

In these difficult times, can we all just try to do right?

Good night and good luck!


March 10, 2009 5:14 PM EDT

In a Form 8-K, Mercury General Corp. (NYSE: MCY) announced that on March 9, 2009, the Company took action to eliminate approximately 360 employee positions or 7% of the Company's workforce in an ongoing effort to improve its cost structure. The Company expects to record a charge, in the first quarter of 2009, of approximately $8 million for severance and other employee termination costs in connection with the reduction in workforce, all of which will result in future cash expenditures. The total annualized pre-tax cost savings that are expected to result from the employee reductions is estimated to be approximately $22 million.March 10, 2009 5:14 PM EDT

Do you need a pair of Google's Goggles?

Yesterday my associate posted about Google Goggles. He explained how to enable the tool. I actually prepared my thoughts for this post on Thursday and then Keith beat me to it, but since it is Saturday morning, I thought I would weigh in on this subject anyway.

Wednesday evening I was up late and to tell the truth I don't know if I learned of Google's Goggles on a television ad or on a cable news story. Based on this admission I probably need a pair of Google's Goggles. Here is the scoop: Google operates what they refer to as Gmail labs. Google has a number of techies that come up with interesting ideas and if the idea has some merit they throw it out there for their Gmail customers to "try out" in a Beta version. According to Goggles' developer, Jon Perlow, "When you enable Mail Goggles, it will check that you are really sure you want to send that late night Friday email. And what better way to check than by making you solve a few simple math problems after you click send to verify you are in the right state of mind?"

OK, we have probably all sent out emails late at night when we are tired, overworked, enraged about life, but at the same time we have probably all been recipients of these types of emails. These late night communications provide interesting entertainment, not to mention insight into our emailing buddies.

Why do people send emails late at night or in the wee hours of the morning? Certainly it is not always a case of too many drinks as some commentators have stated. My experience is that many people do tend to work late at night. It is the quietest time with children safely in bed, co-workers hopefully not chatting incessantly, the pets not running wild, and the phone is quiet. When I worked as a business analyst and project manager for Mercury Insurance Services, we were expected to work from home after-hours. Yes, we were paid for 40 hours, but were told in no uncertain terms that if we had a deliverable deadline we must work at home. Most nights I would arrive home from the office around 6:00PM, dutifully make the family dinner, clean up the kitchen, throw a load of laundry in the washing machine, and then quietly go into my home office and fire-up the laptop. It was not unusual for me to work until 1:00am or even 2:00am writing technical documents. Very often I would email these documents to my fellow team members in the middle of the night. Why? Well, emailing the document gave me a sense of completing a task, as well as a feeling of starting the next work day 5 hours later with a cleaner slate. But imagine my shock when after sending the late night email many of my co-workers would respond immediately with an email that usually contained this phrase: "You're still up, too?" As a by-product, this practice allowed us the opportunity to document the number of hours we were really spending on a project! Just for the record, this project began in January 2003 and was to be completed in three years. It is now October 2008 and the project is still going strong. So much for project management.

While Google's Goggles is very clever, doesn't it really imply that we are not mature enough to reasonably manage our email etiquette? People's entire careers and companies have imploded because of email records. So why aren't we more careful about the content of our emails? Who the heck knows, but here is rule I try to follow. Years ago I reported directly to the president of a bank, Willard (Bill) Bromage. Our means of communicating with peers, subordinates and superiors was to write a memo. One day I handed him a copy of a memo I proposed to send to the struggling IT department. He read the memo and advised: "Save this document for three days. Keep it here on your desk. In three days re-read your document. If, at that time, you still feel committed to your written word, then by all means mail it."

Good advice, don't you think? The difference between Bill Bromage's advice and Google's Jon Perlow's "math test" is that Bill wanted you to consider the content of your communication, Perlow is assuming that if you can solve in 45 seconds three or four simple math equations (and I do mean simple) then you must be of sound enough mind to communicate in wee hours of the morning. In fact, Jon Perlow states in the Gmail "settings" for Google Goggles: "Google strives to make the world's information useful. Mail you send late night on the weekends may be useful but you may regret it the next morning. Solve some simple math problems and you're good to go. Otherwise, get a good night's sleep and try again in the morning. After enabling this feature, you can adjust the schedule in the "General" settings page." Interestingly Bromage had a three day rule, while Perlow has a three math problem solving rule.

A word of caution: try never to ASSUME. Happy Saturday!