Transcription of Radio Talk Show; Minute 29:30 to 35:20
Joe: Maybe address some of the rumors that might exist right now.
Diane: Thanks for reminding me, I appreciate it. That did come up earlier and I didn’t have a chance to talk to you. Now is a perfect time. I did have some rumors, mostly unsubstantiated. But I thought it would be fair to use this as an opportunity to talk about that. In fact, one of the topics that floated up was in terms of layoffs. So, were trying to be pretty straight forward about our communication style and be transparent with our teams. Will you take a minute here and talk about those rumors of layoffs with us?
Joe: I will. And obviously this is a tough subject and obviously one that creates a lot of anxiety in the organization. I want you to know that I am sensitive to that. We do everything we can not to have such rumors, but they do come up. They are generally counter-productive and create stress and worry. We are working hard and will continue to work hard to keep everyone informed on key decisions we are making. And we will let you know when we know about anything like that.
I want to go back to what we are saying – we are totally about the student and position the company for the long-term. I want to emphasis for the long-term success we know that our students have to succeed for our employees and our University to succeed. So that is really key.
And part of this is looking at the revenue and the cost structure to ensure it is in the right balance for the long-term growth. So we continue to make investments for the long-term and you see where we have done that in systems and people but I want you to understand this is not being done at the expense of our existing people. Those of you have helped to build the business and who have enabled us to really make the investments for the future.
That being said, in the short-term we really have more people that we need to handle the levels of new and total enrollments we have. But I want you to know that we planned for that. We already took action to reduce the grad teams to anticipate our long-term people needs. We are seeking improvements, or seeing improvements on revenue and the efficiency side, but it is a bit slower than we had hoped. The good news is that activity levels are up and we know that is the activity levels are up that that new enrollments will follow from that. We need to continue to accelerate those activities that help enroll students.
And I think if that occurs, along with some other changes, like some of the changes you guys know, or Diane certainly knows, and Jared around lead flow and making sure we have enough leads in the system, I believe we will be okay. We’re gonna manage turnover and, um, and use turnover as part of the management of our headcount and we’ll look at new hires and make sure we are not over hiring in this period. And I believe we can get to the right balance of revenue and cost. Now we are going to continue to monitor this and we will keep everyone in the loop.
I think the point here is we have been successful in the past and there is no reason we should be successful now. But, but we have to put forth the effort. We now we had a fall-off in that regard early on when we introduced the uh, project progress. And now we see that coming back and the results are going to follow that. We need you to keep on doing that and I know you can do it. I am confident in that.
Diane: Thank you for that. (skip a few non relevant procedural comments) As we close it would be nice to hear a little bit about change from you.
Joe: yeah, well, the change that we are going thru, and I want everyone to understand it is never easy and it is very very normal the feeling that you are having, weather that be a bit of anxiousness, or confusion or, nervousness, or in some case frustration. All of that goes hand in hand with change. We are doing everything we can to reduce that, um, those feelings if you will, and I can guarantee you that the path will become clearer for you each and every day. Now, we have been privileged to have so many many years of growth. And now to see declines in now enrollments I think makes us all a little anxious. One thing we have to avoid is looking at that now as some form of failure or that we are just not as good as we thought we were because that is not the case. We are seeing now that, uh, our competition is seeing reduced enrollments and negative enrollment growth. We have just been ahead of the curve. And we are also ahead of the curve to see this rebound for us. So keep the faith. Stay the course. We are going to have to adjust the way we define success. I know Jared is going to talk a little bit about that. I won’t steal his thunder. But I want you to know one thing. I am tremendously proud of the job you guys have done and I know that we will be successful. So, keep the faith and hang in there.