How to save your communication job.

You have just been acquired, spun off or "Dunlaped," the latter in reference to the now famous (infamous) cost cutter that has been invited by a number of companies to cut their costs.

If any of the above happens (and it eventually will, in some form), the communication group in any company is an immediate candidate for either elimination or "re-engineering." Regardless of whatever arguments you make on the importance of the communication function (communication with the marketplace, employee morale, better relations with the press, etc.) the reality is the company exists to sell a product or a service to the marketplace. So if any extra cash exists, it will more likely go into product, rather than communication development. Your newsletter that came out monthly will be a quarterly, and instead of doing it in 10 languages you will do it only in English and FIGS (French, Italian, German, Spanish). And the world conference that you held every year for your customers has been eliminated.

This is particularly true because the communication function is so easy to outsource and eliminate from the head count. So the in-house communication people are particularly vulnerable as they are prime candidates to be outsourced. The cost cutter looks great, but you just lost your job - and your medical benefits. Yet there is hope in this bleak picture.

Don't Use Logic to Define Your Job

We are living in the age of the Dilbert Principle, and as preposterous as that statement is, it's true in approaching cost cutting at many major corporations. I have seen more than one case where the communication group tries to use logic to justify its existence. This would include stating how employee morale would suffer by the downsizing and the importance of having good stories printed about the company. This will not work. Nor will a recounting of the awards that you might have won for certain campaigns.

A far better approach is to take a look at how your company's competitors are doing the communication job and use that as a means to state, "I have a better way to show our worth to this company."

In the last six months, we conducted two analyses for one of the U.S.' largest industrial companies. It had been spun off and a new manager was assigned to find U.S. $28 million dollars in savings. The documentation and communication function was a key place to look. The financial media were abetting this effort, for every time the head count would go down (and be properly announced), the stock price would go up. A task force was created in the company to find further savings in communication.

The cost-cutting task force's main issue was not what people in communication did per se, but how these functions compared to what the competition was doing. They had no interest in making comparisons with communication efforts in similar-sized companies, but compared solely on the basis of the competition.

The prime concern of the cost-cutting management was to stay competitive in all areas. Thus, they wanted to know the following:

Communication budgets by function Number of employees and salary levels by function Number of pages/publications produced by person Number of personnel Technology used Reporting How communication services are charged within the company Measures of quality and effectiveness

Editorial Comments

In addition to this list, you can add some historical data about what happened to a company when they downsized. What happened to productivity? In the case we were studying, a competitor had to fire 100 writers, but then hired them the next day as independent contractors at a lower wage and without benefits. They were able to capture those employees' expertise, but not their loyalty. Productivity went down and absenteeism went up.

And since the company had a particularly complex line of products, it was difficult to have a relative outsider give a credible explanation of the product, either in written or verbal form, to the trade press. The company that prided itself on its professionalism looked amateurish in explaining itself with part-timers.

How to Dig Out the Information

"Hi, this is Fred at General Mills. Can you tell me how you handle communication issues at Kellogg's?" This will probably not work in getting the information. Sharing this information is not in the self-interest of the people who are giving it. If the comparison shows that they are not as productive as your group, they are put at risk.

One of the best ways is to look at a several-year-old list of employees at a certain company. Call the company to see if they are there. They probably have moved on, so find out where they are. They are probably willing to talk about what they did in their past job, particularly if any confidentiality agreement expired. There is public information as well. This comes by way of annual reports, 10K statements and other press releases that a company puts out.

But communicators, who are by nature open, may have difficulty digging out this information on their competitors. But as one public relations manager told me, "When your job is at stake, you learn to become more competitive than usual."

Some Silver Linings 

One silver lining exists in all of these re-engineering efforts - even if you do lose your job. More than a few people I know got started in marketing communication by being fired, and then were given the contract to handle their old firm's communication as an independent contractor. The largest public relations firm in Minneapolis, Minn., got its start that way, as did the largest market research firm.

Most people, however, do not want to get another job or start a new company, but continue where they are. And the best way to do this is to see how effective you are compared to your company's main competitors.

John Freivalds is principal of jfa, Minneapolis, Minn.