Carmel Wroth | May 2009 issue
Ode Magazine
Like any CEO in this economic climate, Paul Levy, who runs Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, had to find a way to cut costs. He didn’t want to lay people off, so he did something unusual: He asked his 6,200 full-time employees for their ideas on how to avoid layoffs. They responded enthusiastically. Thousands showed up for the brainstorming meetings and, together, they came up with a plan to save about 450 jobs by cutting pay, reducing benefits and trimming other costs. Levy took a 10 percent pay cut and declined a 30 percent bonus for which he was eligible. “Presidents or CEOs often think they have to make all the decisions and control events in their organizations,” Levy says. “You should trust the people you work with because they care about the place and they care about one another. So why not trust them to come up with approaches that make it better?”
At least 4.4 million Americans have lost their jobs since the recession began, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But some companies are looking for alternatives to downsizing. Toyota and FedEx cut executive pay and bonuses; Gloucester Engineering in Massachusetts organized job shares so people worked less but kept their positions; instead of dismissing junior staff, Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, a global law firm with offices in seven cities, paid them a greatly reduced salary to work for needy community organizations; B&W Trailer Hitches in Humboldt, Kansas, which manufactures custom truck beds and trailer hitches, pays employees to work on civic projects when the factory is idle...
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