The situation effort at the City of Tacoma in Washington state symbolizes what solid employee communications can accomplish. Overall, the city is facing some of its biggest challenges in years. Under these circumstances, morale and commitment among employees could naturally suffer. But thanks to the work of the communications staff, feedback from employees indicates that communication between workers and the city has never been better.

So, of course, the city has decided to eliminate employee communications. Those challenging circumstances led to a 50% budget reduction for the city’s communication department, and the supervisor elected to retain the media relations staff member and cease internal communication efforts. One observer noted that the supervisor himself could have taken on media relations responsibilites, but that effective internal communications is not a role easily passed on to someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing.

Notes the observer: “The attitude from City leaders to employees seems to be, ‘We want you to do more, with less, but we?re no longer going to talk to you.’”

Dave Orman, the man behind the ground-breaking employee communications department at ARCO in the 1970s and 1980s, once noted that eliminating employee communications when times are tough is tantamount to throwing your radio overboard when your ship is sinking. I’m crossing my fingers that Tacoma’s actions are a one-time aberration and not the beginning of a trend among governments.