TennecoWhen COVID-19 hit in early 2020, the Motorparts Business Unit continued operating as an essential business across 9 global markets while protecting employees and dealing with a wave of shifting government and health authority requirements in every country. As HR VP for the business unit, I was responsible for the workforce side of that response: figuring out how to flex labor costs as demand dropped, keep sites safe and compliant, and move people to remote work wherever the job allowed it.
I worked across Functional, Business Unit, Country, and Site management teams to stand up safe working procedures and health management practices across the global footprint, and to shift roles to remote work where possible. A big part of the work was building an analytical approach to furlough and pay-reduction decisions, one that balanced the company's need to protect margins against employees' need for income and job security, so we could make consistent, defensible calls site by site and role by role rather than reacting ad hoc.
All 19,000 employees in the business were affected by these decisions. The furlough and pay-reduction measures cut payroll expense by more than 20% from May through August 2020, and the broader restructuring actions that came out of this work drove sustained net run-rate cost reductions of over $20M going forward.
