Case Study: Westwood Publishing

Summary
Founded by an UCLA graduate, Linda Bosworth, Westwood Publishing has grown to
becoming a multi-million dollar trade magazine company in only a few years. As the company
grew larger, Bosworth turned to young professional managers to run the day-to-day operations
at Westwood and soon the need to trim the employees emerged after the burst of the dot.com
bubble. While the competitors of Westwood released some of their employees Bosworth
refused to do so stating that keeping the  employees through the good and bad was more
important to the company. At the same time while other publishing companies continued to sell
themselves to media conglomerates Westwood refused to do so. Soon the need to trim the
workforce arised and a voluntary service and early retirement program was created for it. With
no one willing to let the employees know about the new program, including the CEO Bosworth,
the responsibility was pushed to the director of employee relations, Dan Cassidy and his boss
Catherine Callahan. The two of them are now left to feel the brunt of the employee’s anger and
figure out how to make the program work.

Create a strategy for communicating change at Westwood Publishing that you could give
to Bosworth.
In my opinion, the communication responsibility or people that are assigned to it must be
reconsidered. The Vice President of Corporate Communications is her family friend, someone
with no experience in the field while she had a professional help to manage her public relations.
Putting the right person in the right position would be the best. In addition, considering
Bosworth’s speech in 2008, regarding to the employees, it would be better if she was the one
letting the employees know about the new program rather than Dan. As the CEO she is in the
highest position in the company, having the CEO deliver the news, letting the employees know
that it is to save the company in a positive light will help achieve better results. When delivering
the news both Dan and the CEO would have to be careful with their words and let the workers
know that the company still cares for them. An improvement in the method of communication
between the communication team and employees would be needed since they currently rely on
memos and newsletters as their main method of communication.

How do changes in the workplace affect how Cassidy ought to think about
communicating the new policy?
Some of the employees of Westwood have been working there for a long time and therefore
may have harder time adjusting to the new changes. In 2008 Bosworth had implied that they will
not release employees due to economic reasons and have dones so for about 16 years.
Breaking such promise will lower employee trust and loyalty. Cassidy will have to work to
prepare the employees for the lay off to lower the possible damages to the company and work
closely with the remaining employees to help them adjust and keep employee loyalty and
efficiency. Investing time and effort to the remaining employees will have to be the top priority in
order to decrease damage to the company and allow the voluntary program to work. Cassidy
effectively communicating the new program will help decrease the effect on employee morale,
efficiency and turnover rate that is bound to happen with the implementation of the program.
Conducting a communication audit prior to releasing information regarding to program and
carefully planning the timing of the program and its implementation will be beneficial. Cassidy
should also present the benefits of the program to the elder workers such as the opportunity to
have an early retirement that would allow them to have experiences that they wanted and
opening a new way to the younger generation. Another benefit of the program is that it presents
chances for employees who want to restart their careers somewhere else with a good financial
package. This will help let employees go and encourage other employees devoted to the
company to work harder. It is important to keep the employees updated on the news regarding
to the program and know that it is a voluntary program and not a forced one.  

What advice would you give Cassidy about how communications to employees are
structured at Westwood?
It was stated that the Intranet of the company is updated unfrequently and that the
communications to employees were mostly sent through memos and newsletters. Such
methods are inefficient, making regular updates to the Intranet and improving the
communication channel towards the employees would be helpful. In addition, the new voluntary
service program is a major one that could potentially affect the company’s future if not
communicated effectively, so having the whole corporate communications leaders present when
the information is released to the workers is needed especially for the CEO. Otherwise the
company can come off as uncaring and cold towards the employees and worsen the situation.
Cassidy will have to have at least the CEO, Bosworth present during the whole process and
communicate to the employees that they do care about them. The CEO and the whole
corporate communication department working together is crucial in this case.