Leadership BITES

Cineworld employees hear about redundancy on Twitter

October 29, 2020 Guy Bloom Season 1 Episode 28
Leadership BITES
Cineworld employees hear about redundancy on Twitter
Show Notes Transcript

Cineworld employees furious at finding out they might 'potentially' lose jobs over Twitter.

The question is how important is engaging your staff?

Only when it suits?

Or is it built into your DNA?

Tell me the experiences you have had of great and poor internal comms.


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Welcome to LeadershipTHOUGHTS. So on this episode, let's have a look at Cineworld. Now. This is interesting. Now of course things move on. So I'm making this commentary and things may already have changed but just looking at around the 4th of October, Cineworld staff are furious and devastated after finding out that they may and that's the word may, potential, face job losses and they find out over Twitter so the cinema chain is considering plans to close its branches and that's putting five and a half thousand jobs at risk. So they obviously that's a pretty big thing. One of the comments on Twitter was this is going out to all my fellow Cineworld colleagues up and down the country wishing you the best in these early hours with the news of the closures..been with cineworld for 12 years to find out I'm not got a job via Twitter is damn appalling and this is really interesting because you know, when we look at what leadership is when we look at what culture is when we look at that constant battle of how organizations, not just inform members of staff. But also make meaning for people the reality is that, that is a constant battle at the best of times. It is something that a lot of organizations unless they put real conscious effort into, struggle. They struggle to get that information not just out to people in a timely way but to make sense of it for people, now. Whether or not Cineworld do this well prior but have completely lost their marbles during Covid who knows. Maybe there's a litany of the not doing it. Maybe they've always been good at it in the past but they've taken their eye off the ball, but what is interesting is that some of the commentary from the Cineworld Action Group, which is formed and run by Cineworld employees is that we were initially and their words not mine. So again, you know don't always know the exact reality of these things, but we were initially sacked via human while inhuman scripted phone calls in March 80% furlough has less many of us struggling to make ends meet and lots of times of examples where they're giving where they've not been listened to. But here's the thing, you have a lot of people that work for Cineworld who are on zero hour contracts and so it's quite a transient workforce. But you've also then got people(oh bit of non focusing there) you've also got people who've been there for 12 years. So what you have is a duty and expectation that when you're communicating to people you're doing so in a way that engages them. Now, that's easy to wrap your head around when the business is doing well. And what you're trying to do is add value by ensuring people are, connected what we see in businesses that are losing their way is that it becomes, quite authoritarian, quite dictatorial and it's you're told what you need to know and you are seen fundamentally as a resource. Now, what's really happening here is is this process? is this a lack of care? because actually to communicate with people, I mean you're not going to get all five and a half thousand people in one go but to say nine o'clock dial in there's an announcement that you can hear and people can do that and at the same time the make an announcement to the City or to the Press. So that's a unified approach to communication, is not complex. It's not difficult to do now. What did somebody do did somebody make a loose comment? Oh, well, you know potentially we might be letting people go so there was a lack of competence there was a lack of craft in.. in terms of people actually holding onto information or the understanding of how that would be picked up by the media who are hungry for the next story and turn into something that you know, somebody in another part of the country read it on Twitter that goes viral amongst that community and all of a sudden, you know, that phrase loose lips shrink that's not even said that right loose lips sink ships, easy for me to say becomes really real. So here's the thought I think the Cineworld example is an absolute classic of either process not being in place or care not being in place either it never has been and this is indicative of what people are experiencing. But while they had a job (woooop) while they have a job they put up with it and didn't worry about it too much but of course what really matters is in this context that we're in, in I'm not going to just say in these Covid times. I don't think that's that's true at all. It's how genuine is it in a leadership team that we communicate with people in our organization because we believe that it's not just our job, but it's a duty of care and we respect people in the manner that goes beyond we have what is expected of us as a process. We informed media. We inform the workforce, workforce. Actually, it's more important to us to manage the communication to the media and to key stakeholders. Then it is to our Workforce. Of course, what's interesting is in the current times that we have that backlash comes background quite quickly because it's picked up by social media then that hits the media. And guess what it looks badly on an organization, so it's interesting and I'd love to be and I'd really like to know what that thought process was? Somebody accidentally said something they shouldn't have done and it ran ahead of them. That's a shame. They never planned to do it, which is really a lack of competence or and they've never bothered having that interest in their people. fascinating. So here's the thing. I'd love to hear any thoughts or observations that youve got on where you've got examples of when you've had communications in an organization that have maybe been that difficult message that have been handled brilliantly and by that experience you go hard message, but the way it's being given to me or us as meant it's been much more palatable or do you have any examples of where actually the information came to you in dribs and drabs? It came through you through those back door conversations. So let me know but I think that's a big thing for us to, to consider when we are developing leaders when we are leaders who are in control of and have responsibility to and for others. What is it that we have as a relationship with informing people, keeping people in the loop and making sure that they do not feel as if they are purely a commodity? Fascinated to get your thoughts see you on the next one.