Sorry everyone, don't believe the positive message our executive team is telling. While they're singing your praises at the all employees meeting about a great 2015, they have already rolled out plans to gut your organization and bring it to its knees. The dreaded "task" is coming. A task so large it leaves rational people dumb founded and would make your eyes bleed if you saw the full amount. All in the name of preserving the dividend. Disney Princess is going away and Monster High is burning to the ground, but instead of rightsizing our dividend, we've decided to cripple the entire organization by forcing unsustainable cuts and saddling it with an unsustainable dividend.
So in light of our imminent demise, and in the faint hope that someone in leadership actually reads this and has some business sense, I thought it might be helpful to spell this out for you. We're in a turnaround, I get it. Restructurings happen in turnarounds. Tough decisions have to be made. This is the reality of business. But have you ever asked yourself: how much is the right amount to cut? How do you know that you're not destroying value by cutting too deep? It happens. In downturns, companies that cut too deep hobble themselves when things turn around. How do we know that these cuts won't ruin our plans for 2017? Are you really close enough to the business to have confidence that we aren't shooting ourselves in the foot? You are rolling the dice with this company's future. Why not put the odds in your favor? If you can't cut the dividend, how much money will the top 25 people at this company make in 2016? How much of this task could you cover if they took a temporary pay cut in 2016? Think about it. How generous has this company been to you throughout your career? How many millions of dollars of wealth has this company given you? Isn't it nice making that much money? Instead of rolling the dice by forcing a massive, destructive task and risk crippling the company's future (and risk crippling your future earnings potential), why not take a temporary pay cut? And allow our fantastic 2017 plans to materialize before you squander them on some moonshot task.
Think about it. This company has given you a lot, built primarily by the people you're looking to layoff. Maybe you could give something in return when the company needs it most? Think about it.