Vanessa Dennis wrote on HR trends blog Cheezhead yesterday of a Boston-based health care provider whose employees cheered on their CEO when he suggested that everyone take a pay cut so he wouldn't have to lay off any of their 8,000 employees.

What struck me about this account is how singularly it's framed by Dennis – as if this kind of thing never happens.  Then again, perhaps through the media due to incidents like the AIG bonus scandal, we might be in the process of becoming increasingly conditioned to demonize the leadership of companies, both large and small, because we believe they perpetuate the "us vs. them" mentality with no qualms.

Well, we for one are here to dispel that notion, at least as it concerns small organizations.  Quite simply, many small and midsize business leaders don't have the luxury right now of sitting in their ivory towers and "chopping heads" when the recession looms and quarterly profit goals are unmet.  But the truth is, many of them wouldn't want to even if they did have that luxury.

Small firms are, in our experience, better at taking the notion of "people are our greatest asset" off the page and living this value.  One of their main motivators here, if not the main one, is that they know they will be more competitive in the long term if they do whatever it takes to hold on to their people – to make the kind of frank plea that Paul Levy made at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.

I've blogged before how this has been the case at Top Small Workplaces we've honored such as Corporate Ink and JA Frate.  We are now in the process of studying how our 2009 Top Small Workplaces applicants are building employee engagement and using smart team building to create higly engaged employees, and we will no doubt see similar examples of employees sharing the pain based on leadership's open dialogue from these firms.

If we are truly settling in for a long recession – and many economists believe we are – then I think CEOs calling everyone together to discuss and make some tough choices will be a much more commonplace scenario in the years to come.  Assuming this is true, it's my hope that this situation will not be newsworthy but, rather, a visible source of inspiration and hope for leaders and employees at all workplaces.

The we're-all-in-this-together mantra is a uniquely American one – look at how it's playing out right now in North Dakota, for example – and I believe it will extend to workplaces more readily in this way for some time.

Do you agree or disagree with me?  What thougths would you add to this discussion?

Photo credit: Candian Rural Revitalization Foundation