When Ann Massey and her team at MACTEC Inc. first realized that the economy was changing in August 2008, they didn’t waste any time or wait to see if things were just a fluke at the engineering, environmental and construction services firm.
Within a couple of weeks, they had reduced close to $4 million in overhead at the $490 million company, stopped spending cash and started conserving it. By October, the decision had been made to reduce employee health coverage, going from seven health plans to two, while asking employees to pay for more of it. Then, over a five-month period that winter and spring, they had to lay off about 100 employees — about $5 million worth of salary — while simultaneously making a few key hires to support their strategic plans. While they had fewer people, they pushed employees to spend more face time with customers so they’d remember MACTEC when things did change. And throughout all of this, they worked to change processes and programs that were costing too much money or were inefficient.
And this was all in the last 14 months.
“What’s detrimental to any company is when managers, and senior managers in particular, do not make decisions,” says Massey, the firm’s president and CEO. “They just stay status quo.”
Massey has been proactive in leading change at MACTEC by finding broken processes, making changes quickly and handling layoffs in a kind way. By doing these things, she’s positioning MACTEC to be successful not just after the downturn ends but also right now while it’s happening.
