Communicate key messages
From 2004 to 2008, the energy, oil and gas industry enjoyed a stretch of very profitable years. In that same year, Express Energy Services was in the process of being acquired by an outside capital group. When the transaction took place, any additional debt was leveraged to complete the deal. That process, combined with the condition of the industry, is what put the company in Chapter 11.
“The business couldn’t support the new balance sheet and the industry had fallen off so drastically, there wasn’t going to be any help from the marketplace,” Anderson says. “It was pretty clear early on, even with the new owners, that Chapter 11 was the process that needed to be taken for the benefit of the organization and the people of the organization.
“From an internal standpoint … I think one of the best things we did was hiring a public relations firm that helped us craft messaging not only from an external standpoint but an internal message.”
While the natural inclination when times are bad may be to withhold information from employees, Anderson didn’t do that.
“We took the exact opposite approach,” he says. “We kept our employees up to speed from day one. We did that with phone communication, conference calls and site visits to let the employees know we were going through Chapter 11. We had to let them know what that meant to them personally, what it meant for their jobs and giving them the security that it was going to be business as usual. That ultimate communication we had with our employee base was one of the things that led for a successful emergence from Chapter 11, because our internal team was involved in the process and really supported the organization. That external communication and … internal communication were the keys for the success.”
