Pinching Pennies at CanWest
An note that was forwarded to me last Friday says a lot about the grim state of the media industry these days. The note was from CanWest Global’s President Peter Viner. Among other things, it asked employees to refrain from printing too many documents.
Although printing documents doesn’t seem like a big expense, executives at CanWest are leaving no stone unturned in an effort to slash costs. Viner also froze all salaries and expenditures, asked employees to cut back on cell phone usage and couriers, cancelled the employee hockey tournament and said he’s open to employee requests for unpaid leave.
Viner said “Just think – if every Canwest employee could save $1,000, the collective savings to the company would amount to $10,000,000!”
The cost cutting comes after CanWest cut its morning and noon TV newscasts last week, and said last November it would cut five per cent of it’s work force. The company said advertising sales have been eroded by the deteriorating economy.
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I love it.
We have a tag line at Astral in all our emails asking people to think twice before printing.
I used to print off all my show prep notes to bring in the control room, now I just read them off a monitor in google docs.
The amount of printing (and the way many items carry over to an extra page with no real content) is out of control in many businesses.
Never mind a business cost, it’s an ecological cost and when you combine the two it’s a bill many cant afford to pay.
Don’t print!
What is the CBC doing to save money?
Blogging about Canwest by a CBC’er is a tricky proposition even if it’s only to praise the competition.
What initiatives have the management implemented to show that they are serious about being frugal and efficient?
Nothing?
It’s always good to be saving money. We should all try our hardest to save our employer money. Global is having some really hard times. Good people with families and mortgages are being let go. I wish them all the best for the coming year. It’s a tough thing for anyone to go through.
I’ve seen nonsense like this before at the CBC to control printing and photo copying. While the brass fly Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto as opposed to taking the train. Wasting hug between dollars on The Niagara Institute to indoctrinate the mangers on how to put the squeeze employees. The real estate division knocking down walls and consolidate space so they can rent out square footage to a so called college that takes advantage of unqualified students, getting them deep into debt with substandard education.
I wonder how long it would take my printing needs to save $600 that Stursberg often expenses on dinner for himself and his cronies who earn well into the six figures.
Agreed we need to try and reduce costs, hard to do with the executives don’t walk the walk.
[...] Perhaps the clearest sign of the trouble Canwest is in financially comes in an appeal to staff to cut back on printing documents. [...]