Elsewhere, it has been noted that Thursday December 4 was "Jobless Day".
This is my "Jobless Day" story.
I'm not jobless. I'll say that up front. But, as of noon yesterday, twelve of my co-workers became jobless, and I was involved in making that happen.
I work for a nonprofit organization, and have been with this particular agency since early 2008. At the end of 2007, the Board and leadership of this agency adopted a very ambitious growth plan that involved expanding from a local to a regional agency and increasing the annual budget by about 25%, from $3 million to $4 million, in 2008, with further growth planned for 2009-2011. It was a very ambitious and exciting plan and I couldn't wait to be a part of it.
The year got off to a great start with the launch of the "new" agency at a very successful fundraiser that happened about a week after I started my job there. I think we all felt invincible at that point. We were going to kick ass, take names, and conquer worlds.
Reality began to peek around the corner at us a couple of months later, when our second fundraiser of the year tanked. As the head of the finance department, I was understandably concerned, but I was assured by other senior managers that this was just a blip on the radar and that we'd recover our stride in no time. "We'll make up the lost income at our next event", they said. "Okay," I said -- after all, I was the new kid on the team and they had more experience with this agency's fundraising history than I did. So we continued on, hiring staff, investing a lot of money in fundraising software... investing. Which means, spending. Cash flow was an ongoing challenge for me because a lot more was going out the door than was coming in. Thankfully we have a line of credit whose purpose is to fund cash flow during seasonal ups and downs of fundraising... but I was using a lot of credit, and we didn't have an unlimited supply. I was growing concerned. But there was another big event coming up in a month or so, and we were going to make up what we'd failed to raise at event #2.
We didn't. Event #3 -- in late summer -- didn't exactly tank like event #2 had, but neither did it make its goal, much less make up for lost revenue.
Other funding streams were chugging along -- annual fund, corporate giving, grants -- but they weren't bridging the gap that was starting to open up with these event shortfalls.
Cash flow became an issue that I dealt with on a daily basis. I worried, a lot. The other senior leaders didn't worry as much as I did. The year's biggest fundraiser was coming in October, and it was going to raise a million bucks. Everyone was sure of it.
Two weeks before the event was scheduled to happen, the stock market began its downhill slide. And the event didn't raise a million bucks -- not by a long shot. And all of my doubts and fears became a reality. We were going to end the year at least a half-million bucks short on cash, with no working capital to use in 2009, unless we raided our long-term reserves.
That's an issue I'm still working on resolving, and we have a game plan in place. But 2009... well, we can't sustain the growth we implemented at the end of 2007. If we try to, we'll run out of money within 12-14 months.
So I started slashing the 2009 budget. 25%, across the board, to get expenses down to where we realistically expect our income potential next year to be. Because if we don't, we'll run out of money. And if we run out of money, we shut our doors.
As a nonprofit service agency, over 70% of our expenses are in salaries, taxes and benefits. Slashing non-staff costs, which I did, could only take me so far. The only place in the budget where significant cost savings could be realized was by cutting staff.
I, and the other managers, got as creative as we possibly could. We took some jobs from full time to part time, while preserving benefits as much as we could. We decided to impose on ourselves four-week unpaid leaves of absence in 2009 -- a move that saved the equivalent of 3 entry-level salaries.
We did everything we could. We exhausted every idea and every option we could come up with.
And still, a dozen jobs had to go - about 20% of our workforce. And if we didn't do it, we'd run out of money, and if we run out of money, we shut our doors.
Shutting our doors, by the way, would have implications. 40+ more jobs lost. Clients - and we have a lot of them - not served. Cutting jobs, while a very bad option, is still the lesser of two very great evils.
We've had to remind ourselves of that a lot in the past month, as we drafted new staffing plans and org charts and painfully decided which people had to go. We've all lost a lot of sleep lately.
Yesterday, Thursday December 4, was layoff day. The CEO let the staff know what to expect on Tuesday in an email.
The top managers split the task up. We met in teams of three with the unlucky 12 people being laid off. My team was split up such that the other two delivered the bad news, and then the freshly laid-off employee came to see me to sign papers, turn in keys, etc. My team had four staff to talk to.
The first one came into my office with a smile on his face. "I'm so sorry," I said. "I was prepared for this," he said. "It's okay. I'll be fine." We went through the papers, filled out forms, signed things. He went to collect his stuff to turn in to me. As he left the room, he said "Thank you."
"Please don't thank me," I replied. I did manage to wait till he was out of the room to start crying. I had to duck into the other office to find a tissue -- and found the other two managers in there, both crying. We all three dabbed our eyes, blew our noses, and then started again with the second person.
She came in to see me in tears. She was deeply shaken and upset. "I'm so sorry," I said. She couldn't speak, so we sat there in silence for a few moments while she cried and struggled to get hold of herself.
"Here's the thing," she said, finally. "I have rheumatoid arthritis and if I don't have health insurance I can't afford my medication. I don't know what I'm going to do."
So I talked to her about COBRA, and if she felt she couldn't afford COBRA, I gave her some other options. I told her to lay in a three-month supply of her meds while she was still on our insurance (which she will be until January 31). I told her about Prescription Assistance Plans and told her to talk to her doctor about helping her to apply for one of those programs. I told her about community health centers and gave her the names of a half-dozen in our area that could and would provide her with health care regardless of her ability to pay. She listened and nodded, and then we did the paperwork.
By the time she'd left the room to go gather up her stuff, she'd moved into anger. She was very angry. I couldn't blame her.
The last two people were also upset when I spoke to them, but less so than person #2. Like the first guy, they both thanked me when were done talking, and like with the first guy, I said "Please don't thank me."
By noon, all of the laid off staff were more or less out of the building. There were small huddles of crying people in the parking lot for a while. I was crying too, but was doing my damndest to 'keep it professional' and not let anyone know I was crying. A couple of people came in to my office to say goodbye. Others simply left the building.
The rest of the day was pretty much a waste for most of the staff. A lot of people left early. I stayed late -- I cut my own (small) staff by half an FTE, but thankfully didn't actually have to lay anyone in my department off, but I personally have to pick up the slack for that extra .5 FTE, so I'm going to be working some pretty long hours for the foreseeable future. I'm not complaining about that -- I've been at this for a while now and this is not the first time I've had to weather hard times in a nonprofit, and it probably won't be the last, either. I have my job, I have a roof over my head, and I count myself very fortunate right now.
But the people who lost their jobs yesterday -- we are a tight-knit staff, and I had very good working relationships with every single one of them, and some I considered to be friends. I was a party to hurting people I care about, and I'm sickened by it. Knowing that it was the result of circumstances far beyond my control, and knowing that by doing this we're (hopefully) saving the agency (I say "hopefully" because I don't know how bad this economic meltdown going to get or how long it's going to last) -- well, knowing these things only goes so far toward mitigating the sadness and guilt I feel right now.
I mentioned in a comment to another 'layoff' diary a few days ago that this was happening in my agency this week. Someone replied and accused me of destroying lives and families and announced that I deserved no sympathy.
I'll agree with this, at least: I don't deserve sympathy, nor do I want any, nor am I asking for any with this diary. There are a lot of people on Kos who are losing their jobs and I don't fault any of them for feeling angry, if they do feel angry. They're entitled. And if hating me makes anyone feel better right now... well, you're entitled, too.
I also don't want to create the impression that I think everyone who lays off employees is really a good guy at heart. The CEOs of megacorporations who implement massive layoffs while keeping their own obscene salaries and benefits packages and perks deserve every bit of the anger and contempt that they get.
But that's not us. That's not me. I wish with all my heart that we didn't have to do what we did yesterday. I know what those 12 people are facing, and the fact that I myself have faced the exact same thing in the past doesn't make me feel any better about it.
Thanks for reading.