Whether in the public or private sector, change is a difficult thing.  Invariably, it creates tension and insecurity, or exacerbates existing insecurities among employees.  It's a challenge for managers, and the “rank and file”.  The methods managers use to clearly communicate objectives, and the reactions of those who are being asked to implement the changes, can determine whether the venture succeeds, or fails, or falls somewhere in between.

And so it is in the various “entities” under the BBG.   For a long time now employees of one of those organizations, VOA, have been on standby on the runway leading to a long-promised reorganization.  For more than a year, the management of the IBB and VOA beneath it has pledged repeatedly, in response to questions raised by employees, that the final act is still to come.

A major focus of the reorganization, as has been obvious for several years, is the transformation of VOA into a deliverer of news and feature programming using multiple platforms.  This has impacted language services, some of which (Russian to cite one major example) have been turned into Internet delivery operations.

VOA's Central News Division has struggled to meet growing demands of language services, growing out of the review process.  In the main newsroom on the first floor of the Cohen building, two major changes have been underway.  

A new Managing Editor for Online Operations has been busy attempting to transform the VOA web site, based on frequent 

assessments of metrics that rate certain news stories based on their popularity among users (or readers) of the VOA site.  There is no mystery to this.  

It's specifically aimed, as one VOA manager put it, at “driving traffic to the site.” 

VOA's English broadcast operations, which it is now abundantly clear was deliberately targeted in recent years for elimination, have been injected with some new life with the advent of a regional “hub” system.  Much of this might be viewed as good news.  But it usually pays to look a bit farther beneath the surface.  In recent weeks, two long-time VOA employees – one a veteran English newscaster, the other a four-decade veteran broadcaster and correspondent – issued farewell notes to colleagues.    

For those who were not on the receiving end of these messages, here's an excerpt from one of those notes: 

“Some of the reasons I’m leaving are professional:  I have watched with dismay over recent years as the VOA was hollowed out and its voice muffled.  The siren call of ‘new technologies’ is sounded although some of those technologies serve to narrow user horizons to existing biases rather than expand them as is the promise of radio.  All these considerations have informed my decision to retire.  But, ultimately, the [per]suasive reason was this:  the experience and abilities of the professional staff of the VOA no longer seem valued.  And so, when what you bring to the table is not well received, it’s time to take it elsewhere.”

The other departing VOA employee had this piece of advice to those remaining: “Don't let the bullies get you down”.

Considering the turbulent history of management-employee relations in this place, it may be easy (and predictable) for managers here to dismiss such comments.  “It was time for them to leave” is one reaction heard in the wake of these notes.  “They were just emotional after so many years” another suggested.

To other ears, and based on information making its way out of what on surface might appear a happy ongoing transformational process with bright-eyed enthusiastic workers focused like a laser on the new multimedia future, departing messages such as these point to a working environment that for some has become hostile, in important respects.

Apart from the examples cited above, it seems there are legitimate reasons to be concerned about the willingness, or even any basic interest, that BBG and IBB management have to address specific concerns that have been voiced repeatedly over at least the past year by some long-time employees in VOA's central news division, as the reorganization moves ahead (whenever it actually does formally begin).

Where the working environment is concerned, it appears that some of those attempting to voice concerns have been labeled 

by management as complainers, assessed as troublemakers resistant to the process of change pointed to earlier in this commentary.

In the case of Central News, those raising concerns about, among other things, a metrics-driven overhaul of VOA’s web site, include individuals with extensive proven experience as analysts and correspondents, have apparently been placed in the middle of a bull’s eye.

For the purpose of this commentary, we will leave aside the specifics but will observe that they have to do with concerns about quality, consistency, and news judgment regarding material on the VOA web site, questions about work load and work flow growing from new demands placed on employees, training issues, and other questions that should be of concern in an organization whose charter contains the words “accurate, objective and comprehensive.” 

Recently, management took a group of employees to a retreat/workshop in South Carolina, an event (at a reported $1700 cost per person) that was billed, as an emailed invitation put it, as an opportunity for some employees to become “evangelists” for the reorganization.  There should be concern about the extent to which conversations in this week-long retreat may have focused on how to deal with employees already labeled as malcontents.

IBB and Central News management have been telling employees for months that “reorganization” is just around the corner.  Now, managers are calling employees to meetings designed to convey what it is hoped will come out of all of this, with the latest target for implementation being Labor Day.  Meanwhile, management's response to those raising reasonable questions about how key aspects will work in practice, and their impact on the news product, has often been dismissive, at times condescending.

In an organization that scored the lowest in employee satisfaction in the Federal Human Capital Survey, there is good reason for IBB managers and their BBG overseers – including the incoming board – to pay attention to those who are raising important issues, as bothersome as these may be to those charged with ensuring that the new media wave does a thorough job of sweeping everyone along in its path.

Some VOA managers seem to appreciate the importance of this.  Not all corporate memory is bad, and can helpfully inform the process of change.  

Unfortunately, others seem determined to simply march forward, continuing to label some of the most professional and productive employees the agency has as rebels, about 

whom the easiest observation some managers would make is as it was for those who recently spoke out on departure with as much candor as they could, “It’s time for them to leave.”