#486  from Innovative Leader Volume 9, Number 8          August 2000

FORUM—from our readers

People Come First?  You're Kidding!

The very large company, where I’m employed, has been stressing the mantra, “People come first!”  The Human Resources Department teaches us that “people” include not only customers, but employees as well. This simple saying is on posters all over the site.  It is also a signature on many internal email and written memos.  Kind of nice.  It adds a bit more humanity to our high-pressured, and fast-paced, environment.  We’ve been saturated with “People come first!” for about two years.  Shouldn’t be anything to complain about.  Nice touch!

Here’s the complaint.  Management has, with a simple action, totally negated “People come first!”  Among my colleagues, it’s become a joke.  You see, a difficult, and chancy, project was discontinued, and each of the employees--a total of 32--working on that project was let go.  The project was on schedule, but corporate financial pressures forced the cut.  A third of these people had been with the company for more than twenty years.  Two of them (one is my best friend) had made enormously important contributions in previous projects.  These two people were among the company “stars,” and were (I assume) put on this difficult project specifically because of their proven innovative abilities.

Now, why in the world wouldn’t the company have offered these stars positions in other projects?  They are, far and above, better than the average employee at their level.  They would be great bets to make significant contributions with other projects.  No, the people had to disappear along with the project. 

Maybe “People come first!” was actually followed, as weaker people got to retain their jobs.  They probably see this cut-and-not-rehire-even-the-best action as a demonstration that “People come first!”  If this is the company philosophy, high-class innovation is going to disappear around here.  Mediocrity won’t get the company anywhere.

I remember a cartoon (forgot which one) in which an executive said something like, “Our people are our most important asset; whenever we need to raise our stock price, we just fire a few.” 

“People come first!”  You’re kidding!

Anonymous