Rather than set a specific head count number of employees to keep or cut, you should simply look at ways to structure the leadership more effectively. Sometimes that can involve small changes in personnel, but in other cases — at Inuvo it was also a matter of consolidating subsidiary businesses — it can mean creating an entirely new organizational structure and changing out entire management teams and boards.
While making personnel decisions is always difficult, reassessing your leadership team is a key part of getting your company back to operating efficiently and profitably on a cash-flow basis. It also demonstrates to existing employees that you’re giving them the leadership they need to achieve growth.
“The whole company was re-energized and re-motivated when they finally realized that we actually did have a senior leadership team at the company that was committed to the success of the company, one,” Howe says. “Two, they felt like they were a part of something that was going to be very successful and grow.”
Howe saw that personnel headcount was the biggest expense base for Inuvo and a key area to improve cost efficiency; yet, before making these decisions it’s important to look at all your areas of business to examine cost saving opportunities.
“Every single expense line in the company we just systematically went down through them and said ‘Why are we spending this money? Why are we spending this money?’ And, is it giving us a return or not?’” Howe says.
Most important, once you have a plan to reduce expenses, you need to enact it quickly.
“When you first do a turnaround, you’ve never done one and you get in there and you tend to over analyze the problems,” Howe says. “It causes you to take too much time to make the kinds of expense cuts you need to make to get the operation under control.”
How to reach: Inuvo Inc., (727) 324-0211 or www.inuvo.com
