Saturday, February 28, 2009

The Corporate Huddle and Open Book Management...


I'm wondering if open book management is good or bad thing nowadays??? How will employees react to negative news? Will it affect their work performance? How so?
Posted by at

1 comment:

  1. AngelaMarch 2, 2009 at 8:15 PM

    I actually really like the idea of open book management and I think that it can work to a company’s benefit. It gives the employees a chance to see what the financial situation of their company is and gives them some insight as to what the company is doing on a day to day basis financially. By employing an open book management policy members of the company gave give their input on the financial situation of their company. They can help create goal and actions. If they feel that they are being kept in the loop they may feel more compelled to help out in any way they can to keep the company thriving. To be part of a team is to working towards the same goal. This is an excellent team building exercise and experience. Right now with being in a recession many companies are laying off employees as a way to cut back. By coming together as a team and looking at the financials, the team may come up with other ways to cut back that don’t involve laying off their co-workers or being laid off themselves.
    I work for a small non-profit company that employs about 35 full time people. About two years back, our company was blessed to receive a sizeable donation. When employees heard of this, they automatically starting saying that the money should be used for raises or to hire additional workers since we were short staffed. Well our Board wanted to use the money to pay off part of our mortgage payment and the employees did not know why they would want to do this. One day the whole staff sat down with the finance director and went through the financials. He explained to all of us what the benefits of paying off the mortgage were (freeing up money monthly to cover other expenses and the possibility of saving money if we were ever to lose funding, which is happening right now because of the cuts in government funding). Once the staff learned about where the company was financially they understood why the board wanted to do what they wanted to do. It also prompted discussions on other ways that we could save money like cutting back on copying and wasting supplies. For us, open book management was definitely a benefit and really helped us pool together as a team.
    ~Angela

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)