Big companies are not immune from this trend. FedEx has frozen wages and salaries. So has Weyerhaeuser. Alcoa froze salaries — plus is laying off 13,000.

Even the freezing of salaries isn’t preventing companies from laying people off.

The one ray of good news: some companies that are freezing wages and salaries of workers are also reducing the salary and bonuses of senior executives. About time.

Would you accept having your salary, benefits and bonuses frozen? Do you think you could still be laid off if you did?

Or, do you have any choice?

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It all started with companies eliminating pensions, of course. That part is old news. The new news is that more and more companies are foregoing the “company match” portion of the 401(k) retirement plans used now by most companies.

The reason is earnings. Taking away that typical 3% company match to the 401(k) goes straight to the profit line to help support company earnings.

And some big companies are leading the parade.

FedEx is not the only one. Eastman Kodak, Motorola, General Motors and Resorts International are among the companies that have cut matching contributions to their plans since September, when the credit markets froze and companies began looking urgently for cash. More companies are expected to suspend their matching contributions in 2009, according to Watson Wyatt, a benefits consulting firm.

For workers, the loss of a matching contribution heightens the pain of a retirement account balance shriveling away because of the plunging stocks markets.

“We are taking a beating,” said another FedEx mechanic, Rafael Garcia. “In a year, I lost $60,000 of my 401(k). You can’t make that up.”

No you can’t.

The big question is once eliminated — for temporary economic reasons — will the matching funds come back? This happened one other time and most companies restored the employer match — but these are different times. The recession looks like it will last longer and is already more severe than most of the past downturns. That puts significant pressure on companies to preserve cash and reduce losses.

Even if companies restore the employer match, they won’t restore it all the way back to make up for what they missed in your account.

So you are out of that much of your retirement savings. More that you have to make up with your own savings.

Will 2008 be the start of companies eliminating their portion of employee retirement accounts forever?

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Every person can have many attributes of their professional or personal brand. All of these attributes help you differentiate yourself from other candidates in an interview, the quality of your work, and your ability to take on more responsibility.

There is a lot of chatter about honing specific aspects of your branding, whether through social or business networks or your on-line presence.

But most of the advice ignores the one branding characteristic that is most important to hiring managers, inside the company and out.

That branding attribute is this: you deliver the work you say you can deliver.

Delivery trumps all professional branding attributes

Consider any type of branding attribute: you can increase revenue or reduce cost, or are a process savant. Just name the attribute you think you can contribute to an organization.

Then consider that all of those attributes have an assumption of delivery of work behind them.

If your brand is building revenue, you will need to show how you built revenue for a company. If your brand is cost reduction, you will need to show how you got the cost reductions. If your brand is process, you will have to show how your process work delivered improved efficiency to the work.

If you can’t quantify what you delivered, your professional brand will be met with disbelief.

Consider all of the characteristics you believe you bring to your work. Write them down. Then pair them up with the accomplishments you have done that show that you have delivered on your brand.

One professional brand attribute, many accomplishments

Building a brand is not done with a single accomplishment. Instead, there are many accomplishments that need delivery in order to solidify a “brand.” FedEx doesn’t get a brand of getting there “absolutely, positively overnight” by delivering one plane to a city.

Instead, consistent delivery of millions of packages absolutely, positively overnight is what solidifies the brand.

Consequently, you can’t say that you are a process savant and only analyzed one process that improved the business a little. Instead, you need to analyze dozens of processes for improvement and developed results for each one.

Each of these instances helps you solidify your professional brand.

Concluding thoughts on professional branding

When you are reading all of these career sites about building a professional brand, it is difficult enough to come up with the 3-4 brand attributes that you believe about your work (we’re too close to our work).

But, you need to take the next step. For each professional branding attribute, you’ve got to build enough accomplishments around that attribute so there is no question of your brand.

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