In the wake of employee howls of injustice and protest, Finish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat reports that Nokia CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo has decided to give up his personal bonus for the second half of 2006 (see Nokia employees walked out). Kallasvuo announced his decision in a blog entry on the company intranet on the heals of employee outcries over a cancelled bonus program.
Despite reporting record profit and revenue in January, Nokia announced that it would not be paying out special employee bonuses because the company failed to meet the board's goals (see Nokia's bad business is good communications). Employees were not to be paid, but under the plan executives were still to reap handsome bonuses. The outrage was predictable.
Worse yet, in spite of everything, Nokia recently announced 700 job cuts. Despite some innovative damage control on the corporate intranet, some 8000 white collar employees walked off the job in protest.
Initially Kallasvuo used the intranet to justify the cancellation of the bonuses in an online video speech. HR and communications managers also used discussion boards on the intranet to help calm the storm.
Nokia is proof positive that regardless of the efforts, skills and technology used by communications staff, no mount of PR can reverse a bad business decision.
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Toby Ward is an intranet consultant and CEO of Prescient Digital Media. Listen to his Intranet Report Podcast at http://intranetreport.libsyn.com.
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