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Last night KSDK St. Louis aired an investigative report by Leisa Zigman exposing a lavish meeting held by Anheuser-Busch executives. At this meeting decisions were made about job eliminations. An anonymous employee was outraged over it. The story was hyped on teasers for a few days and then aired on the 10 o'clock show.
I'm impressed with KSDK news and their investigative team. They work very hard and sometimes face hostility and physical threats to get the story and get it right. And Ms. Zigman got it right in this case. My question is the relevance of this particular story because of the way it was hyped.
Was the meeting lavish? It didn't appear so to me. Off-site meetings where large scale HR initiatives are discussed are common. A sensitive meeting should not take place somewhere where a misplaced proposal or a hallway conversation can be overheard and rumors initiated. So the fact that this type of meeting took place off-site was actually prudent.
The lake-side facility is owned by Anheuser-Busch, so otherwise, it sits empty. The same goes for the "yacht" which was used to transport the group to a dinner at a lakeside restaurant. The meetings did involve an overnight stay so feeding your employees is proper. As someone who worked in the hotel industry for several years, trust me, there are much more expensive ways to hold a meeting. As far as the drinking that went on, as long as they weren't drinking a competitors product, I don't see a problem with that either.
Currently out of work myself, I don't begrudge companies doing this sort of thing at all. Many of the workers and managers who do have jobs, have unrealistic expectations placed on them. Getting out of the office where there are fewer distractions is a good way to get them to focus and be creative.
We are letting the public hysteria over corporate spending grab hold like a runaway train. If corporations cut all of these type of events, will there be any jobs worth returning to when the economy rebounds? If anything, it provides stockholders ammunition to keep cutting perks in the workplace to the point where a coffee pot in the stockroom is considered "lavish". No surprise that someone like Juli Neimann, who is one of the best financial analysts in the St. Louis area, and someone who I admire, would come down on the side of corporations cutting expenses. In the meantime, with reduced spending, who gets more profits? Stockholders and CEOs.
Keep up the good work, Ms. Zeigman. Your report was mostly balanced as you presented some of the Anheuser- Busch PR departments facts about the meeting. I might suggest an independent expert meeting planner be consulted to give the audience an idea of how cost effective the meeting really was.
The problem with the story was the hyping of it. If the teasers had been presented as a question, "Did these Anheuser-Busch employees go too far?" the same report plays with a more balanced tone and creates a forum for civil discussion on what constitutes "corporate greed". Instead we get an emotionally charged debate leading to the memo released yesterday at Anheuser-Busch attacking Ms. Zigman personally.
Unfortunately, that increase in the rhetoric around the issue makes the piece irrelevant.
Just my $0.02.
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