Open The Channels Of Communication

When it all comes down to it, saving money is the best way certain companies are going to make it through these challenging economic times. Rather than letting go of employees, which is how many companies choose to deal with the situation, there may perhaps be more room for improvement in the efficiency of the company. It is possible to enhance productivity and efficiency without having to cut back on the amount of employees.
Naturally, if your staff was bloated to begin with, there might be no choice, but whenever downsizing and letting individuals go, there ought to be some real consideration on the part of the company. It is not the fault of the worker that management made bad decisions, so it ought to be to the advantage of the workers when management makes good decisions. In other words, the pain of bad decisions should be spread to all of the workers, not only the ones on the bottom rung of the ladder.
It seems only fair and right that if the lower paid positions are made to suffer, the higher paid positions should take some of the burden on themselves. Failure is usually a group effort, but many times the decisions of management contribute towards failure at a much higher rate. So if failure is a group effort, conversely, it would mean that success and turning the problems around is also a group effort. That means that when the problems are identified, that everybody should be informed of what is going on and everybody should be part of the solution to fix the problem.
Working together is the only option. But in order for the solution to work, there has to be clear communication between all parties involved. There has to be clear communication from upper management all the way down to the workers on the floor and everybody in between. If there is a hitch in any of these levels, it will compound on itself and become an even bigger problem.
So communication is one thing that can't be avoided and shouldn't be avoided. Without it, every department and each worker is in the dark and if it is done in a way that doesn't convey its message clearly, then the information does no good and the process doesn't start to get better. The reality is, if there is enough miscommunication and the information does not get processed correctly in a timely manner, the situation can get worse.