As the downturn global credit crisis begins to affect the Australian marketplace and senior leaders look to cut costs at every opportunity, who is looking after our people?
COI, a market leader in employee survey diagnostics and business improvement software recently held a series of HR discussion workshops to help answer some of the more difficult questions.
■ How do we continue to attract and retain the best people? What’s to stop them moving to a competitor who may be doing better and provides a safer working environment during a downturn?
■ How do we avoid the people mistakes of the last economic changes of the early 1990’s with our diverse workforce?
■ What new skills do leaders need to manage in a downturn? As they say, anyone can make money in a booming economy, it is times like these that identify and consolidate the industry leaders.
■ How do we focus on and secure customers, as competitors become
increasingly keen for fewer sales opportunities?
With one eye on revenue and the other on maintaining shareholder value, CEO’s and senior managers could be forgiven for allowing the people side of the business to slide a little, or could they be doing more harm than good?
Attracting and retaining the best people
With employees representing the single largest expense to most large organisations, this would seem the most obvious place to start cutting costs. The problem though is how do we ensure that we get the crucial selection/talent balance right?
Often middle management is targeted for redundancy, although we also know that some of these managers have had some experience in managing through previous downturns. Talented staff remain hard to find (and keep) and need to be well trained to execute their role effectively, which can often be expensive.
Companies have also got to keep in mind that they may need to rehire the very same people they are laying off in 12 months time.
To support this process, it was suggested by our forum participants that "organisations identify internal change advocates (natural internal leaders) and engage them to help keep employees focussed during this time".
Another idea that came shining through was that HR needs to focus on the opportunities, for example to continue to build the organisation’s brand by “leading the media on related issues, by providing some good news stories for them to follow, particularly about managing adversity well.”
Avoiding the mistakes of the previous economic changes of the early 1990’s
“We must learn from our mistakes in previous downturns”, said one of our participants, “we must keep the middle managers (those with some experience in managing through a downturn) largely in tact. We have to look to leaders to really stand up and lead through this period.”
These managers will be more than willing to help out and multitask because they have experienced the harsh realities of previous downturns. Organisation must look to them for support.
What new skills do leaders need to manage in a downturn?
The question was posed by one of our groups, “are our leaders and managers ready for what is going to be expected of them?” The consensus among the groups was that as few have managed during tough times, they are not ready and will be stretched beyond their capabilities. Issues such as communicating the good and the bad news effectively, creating buy-in from those left to do more with less, increasing productivity and facilitating multitasking and cross polinisation of skills etc.
The other side of that coin is that HR leaders must champion and demonstrate the commercial value of staff surveys (collecting staff feedback), training, coaching, mentoring, etc.
It would make sense then that the focus of all good organisations needs to be on leadership development and training for those leaders who are left behind to guide the organisation through the maze.
Some of the key points from our discussion groups:
• Identify skill gaps and build a good ROI case to provide assistance, training coaching and mentoring
• Provide opportunities for employees to express themselves
• Listen effectively and respond to (or escalate) concerns quickly
• Engage employees in finding solutions
• Clearly define the way forward and communicate it well
The other big issue raised by participants was, how do we maintain the team and organisational cultures, that we have spent years carefully building and honing, when we have let people go?
Our focus groups believe that alignment and congruence are the keys to success in these difficult times. One participant said, “Internal communication must be well structured, transparent and aligned with the organisations strategy. The direction of the organisation must well mapped and communicated to all employees if we are to survive this crisis with our integrity in tact.”
Focus on securing customers
From an HR perspective, the answers from our discussion groups were focussed around ensuring that the right people were in place (it’s getting easier but it’s still tough to find really good talent out there) equipping our people with the right tools and identifying and resolving the core issues holding back productivity.
One of the key themes to emerge from our focus groups was to “look for the opportunities available in the marketplace. Some of our competitors will take their eye off the ball and slip up. We need to be ready, we need to get our people ready, we need to get our organisations ready”. The empahsis was on managing the processes correctly, and communicating transparenly with our people. The better the leadership, the better the outcome.
Conclusion
Trust can easily be eroded through the decision to downsize. This trust can take years, even decades to regain, and will inevitably affect staff engagement and productivity. Organisations, leaders need to work with HR to develop a powerful strategic plan and then stick to the script. This will eliminate poor management decisions on the fly.
It is also very important to listen to your employees during this time. Communication is a two way street and needs to be open and transparent, particularly during tough times when employees will look to leaders for “the truth”.
The key themes to emerge from our focus groups included:
• Being brand conscious in every decision and action
• Listening to employees and hearing what they have to say – is now more important than ever.
• Focus on training, coaching and empowering leaders to help them manage better during tough times.
• Facilitate better performance measurement and management practises to help drive poor performers out of the organisation.
• HR needs to become more strategic and focus on the opportunities.
Contributors
Thank you for all those HR professionals and Consultants that made these focus groups a reality. Contributors to the forums and therefore this whitepaper included Mandy Mellis of Premier Global, Michele Jones of Ross Human Directions, David Heap and Randal Tame of Insight and Influence, Liz Varley and Narelle Hess of Challenge Consulting, Melinda Holder of University of Sydney Union, Jill Connell of Insight Alliance, Natalie Keen of Sydney Ultrasound for Women, Ali Trad, Bill Jones, Jonathan Philips and Michael White of Uniting Church in Australia, Maria Lyons of Fresenius Medical Care, Stuart Hoogstaat of Offset Alpine Printing, David camp of the COI Group and Darleen Winston of IAG.
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