Assignment #2

In each instance, I would deliver this news in person.  Because this impacts employee's jobs, I feel that face to face communication is essential in making them feel respected and cared for.

To the Director:

Over the past year we’ve been following the funding and trends associated with your program very closely and have been thinking proactively and strategically about the possibility of losing government support and what that might mean for us. We were notified today that funding will be cut. We’ve been applying for private funding to continue this work and have also been looking at our delivery model to determine if we could shift the emphasis from employment to mental health services to receive funding under this new lens. I’ll need your help and input in examining these ideas. You and your team have done amazing work for this agency and the people we serve and it’s my hope we use your innovation and creativity to tackle this problem. This is going to mean big changes for us, and we’ll have to pull together to develop a plan of action for how we will react as an agency and how we will communicate this to staff who will rightfully have questions and concerns about what this means for their jobs.

I first want to answer any questions you might have about this change and then I would like to hear from you what you concerns you think your staff might have. Then I’d like us to meet with your management team to deliver this news and begin to discuss strategies to address the loss of funds.

I plan on delivering this news to all staff meeting and would like to be as prepared as possible to address any questions that may arise. Because the final announcement was so sudden, and we are still examining strategies to replace funding or change the program, I won’t have a high level of detail to provide, but I feel it’s important that staff here this news from leadership as soon as possible.

To the Managers

Thank you for coming in today. As you know, we’ve been following the funding and trends in service delivery associated with this program very closely. You and your team have done amazing work in bringing your operations from start up to steady state. Over the last year, we’ve had some strategic discussions about what we might do if we lost funding for the program. Today we were informed that this is the case and that government will not allocate funding to this program in the next fiscal year. We have been pursuing private funding to replace the government dollars and are also exploring how we might shift the program focus to qualify for government funding from another office.

I wanted to bring you in to hear this news from me first and to answer any questions you might have.

Then I’d like to hear what you think would be the biggest concerns from your staff.

Finally, I want to ask for your help in supporting our staff through this change and in lending your insight and creativity to examine ways that we might redesign the program or shift resources to minimize the impact we’ll feel from the loss of dollars. Over the course of this contract you’ve demonstrated that you have ingenuity and flexibility to react to change. I’d ask that you keep these conversations private for the time being because I don’t want to add to staff anxiety by releasing plans that are not finalized yet.

I will deliver this news to all staff today at 2:30 pm meeting. I feel it’s important that they hear this news from me and their leadership team as soon as possible, even if we don’t have a high level of detail to provide. As leaders, I expect you to make yourselves available to staff during this time, but want you to know that I will be available to you or any staff person that has a question or concern. I’m confident we can face this challenge together.

To the Staff (this is repeated from last week)

Hello to everyone. Since we began this program 4 years ago we moved this program from a stumbling start up to a high-functioning, steady-state operation that has connected 4,000 individuals with conviction histories to services. As an agency, as a program and as a team you have exceeded expectations set for you by our funder, our leadership and ourselves. When we began this program, just like our clients, we were working amid constrictions—those set up for us by our funder, by employers and by ourselves—but you were all smart enough, thoughtful enough and passionate enough to embrace “the Power of Possible” and to understand what this program was, what we wanted it to become and how we would evolve to achieve it. By your example and through your work, you helped 4,000 people see that “No” is never a final answer, it’s only a stop on the way to “Congratulations, when can you start?”

A new funding strategy will be released publicly in the next few days and I want to have a dialogue with you about what it is and what it will mean for our work moving forward. While there is no question that our work is valuable and impactful, the government has decided it will not be funded in the upcoming round of contracts. Our program officer and on contacts assure us that this decision is based upon spending cuts across the board and a shift in policy from employment programs to programs focusing on public health interventions for individuals with conviction histories. This shift in focus was rooted in data from sources like the DOJ, the DOC and the CDC and anecdotal data from service providers, clients and families that identified mental health, substance use, poor health outcomes and lack of support networks as root causes for the behavior leading to criminal convictions.

What does this mean for us? In the next few days, we’ll be looking at a number of strategies to respond to this at different levels of the agencies. Because we were just informed, we don’t have a detailed plan and I apologize that I don’t have specifics for you right now, but I respect you and work and I believe that it was important that you hear this from me first. This may mean changing our program design, reassigning some staff, updating or changing positions and responsibilities, and examining various ways to curtail expenses. Right now I can’t say definitively that there will be no layoffs, but we will do whatever we can to avoid them. What I can tell you is that this “No” is only a stop on the way to something new and I believe we have the creativity and agility to respond. I’ll take any questions you have now and will be available to any of you over the course of the week if you are more comfortable speaking individually rather than in front of a group