ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, September 29, 1996 TAG: 9609270025
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CAMILLE WRIGHT MILLER SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES
``Welcome to Roanoke" usually was the first sentence Don Carlson heard from Ingersoll-Rand Co.'s employees early this summer.
"This must be a difficult thing for you," Carlson, the rock drill division plant's new human resources manager, recalls the workers saying next. His first assignment was to eliminate more than 50 jobs at the 440-worker plant.
Perhaps most surprising was that the empathy was coming from the very workers who were about to lose their jobs - victims of downsizing yet beneficiaries of the company's detailed plan to cushion the impact of inevitable change.
And when the first group of workers left the plant in Northwest Roanoke, they presented flowers to the human resources department. It was not exactly the scene usually associated with corporations laying off workers.
Nationally and in Western Virginia - most recently at Yokohoma Tire Co., Carilion Health System, First Union Corp. and Hercules Inc. - companies have shed thousands of workers as competition and other market factors have forced them to shrink.
The Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in August that 3.8 million long-term workers lost their jobs between January 1993 and December 1995.
This trend is so widespread that downsizing may well become the hallmark of the 1990s workplace. But how it is accomplished makes the difference among companies.
The process and care companies use has an impact on the self-esteem of workers, their success in getting their next job, and on the mental health of employees and their families.
On a broader level, how the downsizing is conducted underscores the value a company's senior officers place on the work force.
In the worst-case scenario, employees are notified as large groups of their termination and escorted out of their workplace by uniformed security guards. Such situations evoke images from the comic strip "Dilbert," in which a hired-gun consultant uses a downsizing tool called a "can-o-matic," firing people at random by slapping pink slips on their backs.
There are better-case scenarios.
Ingersoll-Rand's Rock Drill Division implemented its downsizing effort in June. It had been no secret that layoffs were coming, and plant employees have been aware of the impending change for months.
In its planning for the change, Ingersoll-Rand wanted to stress the human element in reducing its labor force, Carlson said.
"There were no security people. We were very deliberate about that," he said. ``It was a senior management group decision, it was calculated," and Bob Freiburger, a Charlotte, N.C. cosultant hired by the company, played a big role.
Carlson, Kay Adams, the supervisor for training and communication, and Nancy Gladden, the former employee services supervisor, were the core team responsible for pulling off the reduction. They agreed that every action would be consistent with the published statement of the Rock Drill Division's values. Carlson said the downsizing was an opportunity for Ingersoll-Rand officials to be "seen as living our values.''
Team members also included outplacement counselors, financial advisers and Social Security administrators.
Carlson said the company looked for "providers who could demonstrate that their philosophies and values were in alignment with our own."
There also was the mandate that the outside experts be local. Ingersoll-Rand management didn't want someone to "fly in, do the work, and leave on a plane."
For that reason, Freiburger nearly didn't get the job. By focusing on the many years he formerly lived in Roanoke and on his locally provided phone number that rings in his Charlotte office, he overcame his out-of-town stigma.
* * *
Early retirement was not even on his mind when Richard Cox went "went to work feeling pretty good" on the day Ingersoll-Rand told employees that 50 of their jobs would be eliminated.
But Cox, 55, accepted the company's incentive plan to retire. Cox, whose name was offered by Ingersoll-Rand for this story, began working for the Roanoke plant in 1963 as a lab technician. He worked up through the ranks to senior manufacturing engineer.
"At 9 o'clock there was the initial shock of being called into a meeting" and told of the changes that could include his own retirement, he said.
"It took three or four days for the first shock. My wife and I talked it over. Within a week, the information was coming in."
Once they'd sifted through it, Cox said, he realized "I like my job at Ingersoll-Rand, but I have the opportunity to take the money, go somewhere else, get a job doing what I like and enjoy the hell out of my next seven to 10 years of work."
He now works as a manufacturing engineer for another Roanoke manufacturer.
"The economic situation in Roanoke was such I felt I could go any place and work. It took Ingersoll-Rand to make an offer," and the consultants the company hired "to make me see that."
Cox added, "I've asked myself why I didn't do this five years ago."
Although the Roanoke facility has been operated by Ingersoll-Rand since 1969 to make its power tool product ine, Carlson said, once they "brought in the rock drill line, it has become the predominant division." As a result, said Adams, "our employees knew that the power tool product would be phased out. That's been communicated openly" for some time.
``We didn't want to do it in a precipitous way that wasn't well-planned,'' Carlson said. ``It evolved over time, and at some point we began to set time lines where we'll accomplish the various steps. Once we made the announcement to the employees, we did publish a time line and stick to the time line." The announcement was made June 20.
Adams said the planning started ``a couple of months in advance of the announcement. The human resources department was involved in planning, as far as getting the proper expertise, laying a foundation, making sure we had a good, viable plan before we implemented anything."
Gladden, who has since taken a job as human resources manager with another Roanoke-area company, emphasized that "these were co-workers and friends, and we needed to treat them as such."
* * *
The process began with a letter mailed to every employee in the Rock Drill Division spelling out why a downsizing was needed. It was signed by E.R. Zimmerman, Rock Drill Division vice president and general manager.
Downsizing would take place in stages. Those who were eligible for retirement and wanted to retire would be offered a severance package. Once the voluntarily retirees were identified, the remaining workers would be examined to see who did - and did not - have the skills that would be needed to make the rock drills.
After the letters were mailed, workers met with senior officers of the division. The company's plan also was stated in a series of meetings between employees and their direct supervisors. Workers who were eligible for early retirement were told in a separate meeting. Then a downsizing was announced publicly with a press release.
Those eligible for early retirement on June 20 were given notebooks with information on pension plans, Social Security benefits, early retirement incentives and other information necessary to make the decision of whether to retire. They were given until July 15 to make a decision, with July 31 to be the last day for those choosing to retire.
Freiburger began the outplacement counseling almost immediately. As owner and president of Freiburger and Associates, he has made a career of helping people in job or career changes. Some of his expertise comes from experience - he was a victim of downsizing among managers at Roanoke's ITT Corp.
One goal of the outplacement process was to enable workers "to envision their life after Ingersoll-Rand," Carlson said.
The company had hired local financial advisers, VIP Planners, to counsel employees on their retirement or post-Ingersoll-Rand needs, including whether they would need to keep their monthly income at the same level or were ready to enter retirement with fewer needs.
Adams said keeping the lines of communication open was essential. In addition to inviting spouses to attend the finance sessions, employees were invited to go to human resources officers with questions.
A list of questions was posted, and updated daily, in the human resources office. Adams recalled saying, "We may not have the answers today, but we'll go wherever we have to go to get the answers for you. We even listed unanswered questions, and you knew we were diligently pursuing answers."
Adams stressed that the decision to leave was entirely voluntary. "We made sure not to try to direct decisions one way or another." Those who chose to retire would receive a severance package with a retirement incentive. Those who chose not to retire, about one in 10, would take their chances on surviving the first round of involuntary termination.
"Not all the folks who left were early retirees; the situation we found ourselves in had a lot of people who qualified as eligible for retirement. One of the ways we could address this was to try and encourage leaving voluntarily. And helping people to do that."
Of the more than 50 employees who left the plant, Carlson puts the voluntary-to-involuntary ratio at 10-to-1.
Once the workers considering early retirement had made their decisions, the staff moved to the next phase: determining who was left, what skills the plant would need, and who had those skills.
Each worker who would be laid off was informed one-on-one. Immediately after the notification, the employee was turned over to Freiburger. The job-search process would begin immediately, with support from Ingersoll-Rand.
The downsizing team was aware that the change could batter self-esteem - for the voluntary retirees as well as the involuntarily terminated.
But, Freiburger said, ``self-esteem takes a dramatic turn upward when they get the new job, so everything is geared to getting that next job."
And, he said, more than 30 percent of those who left had found new jobs by mid-September. Some, he said, were quickly re-employed. Some of them found jobs "much earlier than they wanted. They had planned to take time to paint the house or do some similar work when they were hired for their next job.
``Of those who want to work, 100 percent will be working by the end of the year," he said, and this is because "Ingersoll-Rand, along with ITT and GE, are among the employers of choice. Coming out of one of these, your resume automatically carries some weight with it. The next employer has the impression that Ingersoll-Rand screened carefully, so this individual must be pretty good if they're working for Ingersoll-Rand. It opens a lot of doors."
Even for those who were forced out in the second round of terminations, the last date of employment was flexible.
"Our focus was to have the person and the supervisor work out a mutually agreeable time when they could wrap up what they were doing," Carlson said. "They also worked out a time for the individual to take personal possessions off-site. That could be worked out in a way the person leaving wanted to do it, on a lunch hour, during the day sometime, at the end of the day."
Throughout the process, respect and dignity were to guide decisions. Adams said that "there was a lot of compassion exhibited. You think, `That could be me, I could be in that situation.''' When you see how people are treated, you're ``very appreciative of that and consider that to be a positive.''
LENGTH: Long : 195 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: Key players in Ingersoll-Rand's downsizing plans wereby CNB(from left) consultant Bob Freiburger; Kay Adams, the company's
supervisor of training and communication; and Don Carlson, manager
of human resources. At right is Ingersoll-Rand's newly finished rock
moving machine. color.