Pixstar Reduction SpeechWritten By Arthur Byrd

For A Toastmasters speech

Executive 408 Youngstown Toastmasters

December 9, 2013

This speech is fictional work regarding staff reductions at a certain animation studio. For online purpose, the names and movies have been changed.

Intro:Art Byrd is working on his Advanced Communicator Gold level. This will be his ninth speech for this level.

It will be Project 5, Delivering Bad News from the Speeches By Management manual.The speech will be five to seven minutes long.

Art has set up a scenario, which you as the audience, work for the Animation and Art Divisions at Pixstar Studios, which is know for movies like Toy Tale, Wall-G and Monsters College.

Art is the President of Studio Operations at Pixstar, giving the news of staff reductions.

Art Byrd

Here at Pixstar, our mission statement is to combine technology and world-class creative talent to develop computer-animated feature films with amazing characters and heartfelt stories that appeal to audiences of all ages.

World class creative talent are key words in our mission statement. That means all of you in our animation and art division.

The movie you are currently working on The Great Dinosaur was set for a May 2014 release date.

As many of you know, the movie has experienced a director loss.

Yesterday, our parent company, Duzzy has instituted a release date delay of The Great Dinosaur until 2015.

At Pixstar, we are constantly re-evaluating the creative and business needs of our studio.

With no new movies ready to take The Great Dinosaur place in 2014, we have had to realign our production and support priorities which includes a reduction in our animation and art divisions. With a combined staff of 150, The reduction will effect 30 people from each division.

We will be assessing skills and evaluating the needs based on the work being done as The Great Dinosaur is pared down.

About 60 percent of you will be relocated into the Duzzy Animation Division working on their upcoming feature, Free 2. The other 40 percent will receive reduction notices at the end of January.

As for those that may incur the reduction, we have a plan for you. You have a chance to seek opportunity within the Duzzy company for career choices. We will have counselors available to help with retraining programs. We take care of those costs. There are many directions, you can go within Duzzy, live action films, theme parks and consumer products.

If you seek to continue with the reduction.

Your health benefits will extended for you for seven months after the reduction. To assure that you can take advantage of the benefits. We will pay for the co-pay.

You will still be able to participate in Duzzy profit sharing program. The opportunity to keep or sell company shares at will.

We will provide a generous severance package based on number of years worked and contract specifications. Many of you have not been with us for a long time. We will take of you in a group or one on one sessions to determine a fair settlement.

All of you are important part of the Pixstar brand. The animators help audiences love and sympathize with our characters, instilling rats, monsters, cars, and robots with human-like movement and expressions.

The art department dreams up the worlds Pixstar explores. After creating characters, sets, props, color scripts, and other art, the team brings them all to life in 3D.

We feel with the approach and the implementation of this plan, the Great Dinosaur delay can be made into the kind of temporary setback that makes the movie entertaining and profitable in the future.

Producers Denise Reem and John Lasser will remain with the movie.

First, while this will be painful, it is not lasting. Here at Pixstar, we are distinguished by our ever-present ambition, by our range, and I know that we can get through this without losing our enthusiasm, letting down our audience or losing our competitive edge.

We could not afford to hesitate. As Abraham Lincoln once said, "You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.”

Here at Pixstar, we don’t evade. We innovate.

And now, I expect some of you will have questions. And I will turn that over to our a top-notch supporting cast here to help out with any questions that require specialized expertise.