【正确答案】 A

【答案解析】[解析] 23-30
M: I'd like to say a few words about our Uniton's management employee communication issue. In the last few years, we have seen more changes than many of us could have expected in the entire working lives. From being regarded as relatively unimportant in many companies, management employee communication has become a central corporate need.
Uniton International provides a good example of a company that has adjusted well to the changing needs for communication. Since 1995, Uniton has been turned inside out and upside-down, to ensure that it is a marketing-led, customer-responsive business.
In the last eight years, Uniton has reduced its workforce by more than 80, 000 people, or 35%, on a voluntary basis, with further downsizing anticipated.
From being an engineering company, Uniton is now remaking itself as a service company. The role of employee communication in such a context is to build people's self-confidence, to persuade them that, although it is inevitable that the changes will go ahead, they also bring with them new opportunities for employees. However, this is not an easy task. People doubt that they are losing touch with the company they have worked for over many years. This is understandable, since many of the old certainties are being swept away, including the core activities of the company they work for. Above all, they have had to face up to the fact that they no longer have a job for life.
Employees fall into two main categories in terms of their response to the new situation: a few see their job as a means to an end and have a relatively short-term perspective, with strong loyalty to their local term, rather than the company as a whole. While most people may respond to threatened changes with a feeling of having been let down, and even feel angry at the company for what they see as changing the terms of their employment.
The employee communication process needs to direct its messages correctly to employee and departments within the workforce. This is why middle managers and line managers are so key to communication. They are the people who know about the full range of concerns among the workforce. The problem in the past was that this crucial area was often the responsibility of a separate, relatively isolated unit. Uniton puts responsibility for communication firmly on line managers. People prefer to get their information face-to-face from their line managers. That is the key relationship and where arguments and hearts and minds are lost.
The general rule in company communication is to tell employees as much as you can as soon as you can. If you can't provide details, then at least put the news in context and commit yourself to providing greater detail when it becomes available another rule of company communication is that there must be a fit between what the company is telling its employees and what it is telling its shareholders.

选项中redundant表示被解雇的，与原文“...reduced its workforce by...”一致。