Sometime in August 2002, Anne Wagner asked me if I would be willing to serve on a committee to plan an employee retreat to be held in October and conducted by Hardy Hassenfus. The committee’s first meeting was on September 11. Members were Anne, Mike Moquin, Kathy House, Jennifer Willis and I. Hardy was on speakerphone. At one point in our discussion, Anne brought up the “Common Viruses” survey that was done a few weeks earlier. She said only half of all employees returned the form, and half of those picked “Kill the messenger” as the top virus at MERS. She said she couldn’t understand why employees felt that way. I suggested that we ask them, and Anne assigned Jennifer and I the task. We would talk to staff and present our findings to the Committee at our next meeting, in 2
weeks.

Jennifer and I came up with a plan. We would meet with staff in groups of 10-12 without supervisors and encourage them to talk about obstacles to communication at MERS. We would take notes and report back to the committee. We presented the plan to Anne and she approved.

The sessions were held Monday and Tuesday, September 23 and 24, and by the end of the next day I had a report drafted. I sent it as an e-mail attachment to all participants. Over the next day or so, I re-sent the report to the employees with the changes they suggested. I also collected and saved all the employees' emailed comments.

We gave the final report to the Retreat Committee members and at the next meeting, Jennifer and I were commended for our efforts. No one seemed to be upset, although the very mission of our committee was criticized in the report (item 12 on page 4). Anne did talk quite a lot about the firings, insisting that “progressive discipline” was used, that no information at all could be shared with staff, and that escorting the victims out of the building was necessary to prevent sabotage. When I mentioned that the report seemed to say that the problem at MERS was management, Mike disagreed, pointing out the 1 or 2 (of 15) items that did not apply directly to management.

I think I can safely say that nothing much has changed at MERS as a result of the report. In fact, the supervisor who was the subject of most of the complaints of employee abuse was promoted.