MANAGEMENT
INDUSTRIAL
RELATIONS JAMES W. IRWIN*
Reporting the company's financial status to the employees has proved a most potent w a y to achieve a much-desired solidarity throughout the company A T this time of year in the executive "^^ offices of more enlightened companies, considerable thought is being given to the sharing of financial information, which is legally due stockholders, with the employees who contribute so much toward successful operation. In some companies, of course, it must be admitted boards of directors and top management still resent the necessity for giving financial information to the shareholders themselves, but year by year more and more individuals participate in the progress in disclosure that has been making itself felt for the last decade and a half. This question of passing financial and operating information on to rank and file employees is one that will draw strong argument on both sides wherever seminars on management subjects and those dealing more specifically with employee relations are held. In the chemical and related industries, three financial analyses prepared especially for employees were noteworthy in 1951. The Du Pont Co. and Atlantic Refining Co. developed their treatments in regular issues of their employee magazines. Dow Chemical Co. wrapped its report up in a small, almost pocket-size brochure packjammed with simplified charts presenting the detailed information. All three are brilliant in their simplicity and style. A Good Turn for the Stockholders The vice president in charge of public relations of a great automobile company received in 1938 a copy of an employee financial report and commented "Some day, somewhere, some company will publish one like this for its stockholders so they can understand what is going on in their company." The Dow report comes just about as close to anticipating the answers employees might want on their company as any report could. It was first published in this form in 1950 and has established itself to the point where it will be an annual publication. The Du Pont report included in Better Living, the employee magazine, takes employees behind the scenes and pictures them being given the statistical information by the responsible officers of the company. The Atlantic Refining magazine handled the subject in similar vein, with two employees, Rita Simio Frick, a research and development division stenographer, and Tony Simio, her father, a mechanic in the Philadelphia refinery, visiting the executive offices to talk with Robert H. Colley, president, and Henderson Supplee, execu274
tive vice president. They talked with virtually every policy-level executive and then visited the operations themselves for official explanations of how money is spent. Do employees want such information? The hide-bound, mentally strait-jacketed executives of backward companies are positive in their denials. Findings of Claude E. Robinson and his opinion researchers of Princeton, N. J., emphatically disprove such opinions. Employees Respond Favorably The Robinson staff found that three out of four employees who receive reports read them. Interviewed employees in both office and shop can't see much that is significant in the conventional balance sheet and P and L statement, but they do assimilate statistical data that is interpreted from their own standpoint. Interpretation from the employee standpoint steps up the understanding. Of seven reports studied in detail, the top four, which had relatively strong interpretation, chalked up readerships of 63 to 71//r. The three with mild or almost no interpretation, registered within a range of 49 to 60
