Part 2: Navigating Employee Financial Stress
Chapter 2: A Tough Meeting with Leadership
Before you start, have you read chapter one: The First Signs of Trouble?
I shut my laptop and took a deep breath. The numbers weren’t getting any better. Productivity was down for the third straight month, absenteeism was climbing, and customer satisfaction scores were slipping.
If we didn’t turn things around, we’d have more than just a performance issue … we’d have a retention crisis.
I had called an emergency leadership meeting. As my managers filed into the conference room, their expressions said it all—tired, frustrated, maybe even a little defensive. They had been dealing with the fallout firsthand.
I started the meeting the way I always did: direct and to the point.
“We have a problem,” I said, clicking to the first slide on the screen. “Absenteeism is up 22% this quarter. Project delays have increased by 18%. Customer complaints are at their highest in two years. What’s going on?”
Silence. Then, finally, my operations manager, Lisa, spoke up.
“Honestly? People are overwhelmed. We’re short-staffed on certain days because of call-outs, and the people who do show up are exhausted. We’ve had more last-minute requests for extra shifts, and some employees are even asking for pay advances.”
A few others nodded.
“It’s not just burnout,” my HR director, James, added. “It’s financial stress. People are struggling to pay their bills, and it’s showing up at work.”
I glanced around the room, gauging their reactions. Some managers looked concerned; others looked skeptical.
“Okay,” I said. “What do we do about it?”
Silence again.
“Well,” Lisa finally said, “we could start with more schedule flexibility. Maybe let people pick up shifts that fit their needs better?”
“That’s a start,” I agreed. “What else?”
“Better pay,” someone muttered under their breath.
I sighed. “I hear you, but increasing salaries across the board isn’t something we can just do overnight. We need to be strategic.”
Before we could go deeper, my phone buzzed … a message from one of the board members. We need to talk about performance and expenses. Urgent.
I already knew what that meant.
“Look, I get it,” I told my team. “We need to help our employees, but we also need to keep the business stable. Cutting staff won’t solve this. It’ll make it worse. But if we don’t find solutions, we risk losing our best people.”
They nodded, some more reluctantly than others.
“We’ll reconvene in a few days,” I said, standing. “In the meantime, I want ideas, practical, immediate things we can do to relieve some pressure. We need to act before this problem gets any worse.”
As they filed out, I stayed behind, staring at the numbers on the screen.
The shareholders wanted quick fixes. My employees needed real solutions.
Somewhere between those two realities, I had to find a way forward.
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Stay tuned for the next chapter to see what this CEO does next. Chapter three is coming up.
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