HR Challenges during Recession

Good times or Recession times HR Challenges remains the same. .

HR makes a significant difference.

What happens to the Companies:

Reduced spending – Spend only for the need by the clients/customers - Low Sales – Low Revenue – Huge expenses – Confusions – difficult to manage – leads to cost cutting on

Training, Facilities, People.

HR Challenges:

• Sharing Information

• Engaging employees – create and celebrate short term wins

• Non-Financial Recognition

• Employee participation in cost saving plans

• Creating an anchor for the people to focus

• Reaffirm faith in people and show your care

• Feed the hungry – Opportunity makes them stay

• Employees would like to hear from the horse mouth (CEO) about Company’s position

• Protect the employees when there is a problem. Do not make them panic.

• Create a sense of urgency

• Pull together a guiding team

• Decide what to do

• Create a shared vision/strategy

• Decide what will be different?

• Make it happen

• Communicate

• Empower –give power to the team or person to do it

Retaining Best Performers:

• Challenge them with stretch (bigger or extended or enlarged) goals

• Reward with long-term benefits like ESOP

• Mentor (guide) them.

Repositioning HR (HR Role)

• Heightened focus of cost-effective everything

• Play multiple rolls

• Coaches CEOs and Other leaders

• Increasing HR presence – accessible to all employees

• Ensure core values are not forgotten

Smart sizing with sensitivity:

• Do nothing to do with the human dignity

• Outplacement support

• What you do to the people who leave has tremendous effect on the people who stay

• Ensure as much transparency as possible when you send someone out

Leaders to manage paradoxes:

(A paradox is a statement or group of statements that leads to a contradiction –disagreement or denial)

• Cutting costs & investing where necessary

• Weeding (dig over) the worst out and retain the rest

• Confronting (facing or tackling) the reality and communicating the possibility

• Demanding customer focus – convert customer expectations into employees’ behaviour, Customer focused behaviour.

Building the future:

• Cure the corporate anorexia –

• (A business disorder marked by an extreme fear of becoming inefficient that leads to excessive cost-cutting to the point of serious loss of business and sometimes bankruptcy.

     Example - Some business bosses unfortunately have a mind set and feel that drastic cost cutting alone is the answer when times are tough. They develop corporate anorexia. Those companies have become so skinny they'll be the last to get healthy again.)

• Partner with CEO

• Building the capabilities

• Making the meaningful connections

• Hasselbein factor – (Human dignity and value)

See the positive in people, encourage them, give them hope and build on the possibilities.

Frances Hasselbein was the CEO of the Girl Scouts of USA. Her purpose in life is to bring out the best in the people she meets. Her words and actions evoke a high regard for people. In short, she just saw the best in people. And in human history, Hasselbein has had the record of creating and managing a highly inspired organization of girl scouts with a whopping 780,000 volunteers. Such is the power of focusing on human value and dignity. And this is as simple as managers determined to focus on bringing the best out of people by affirming them and giving them hope and a reason to be optimistic about their future.

I was inspired when I read the book The Art of Possibility by Ben Zander, the famous conductor of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra where he talks about one of the practices for creating a world of possibility. This is about ‘leading from any chair’. As the conductor of any orchestra does not control any instrument nor make any noise but help synchronize the work of others, leaders and managers can be a powerful source of building the rhythm and performance. It is not necessary that to create hope the leaders must be high ranking managers. Well, therefore you can lead from any chair, if you wish to and are determined to.

Long term plans are important – short term plans will no longer help.

Short term survival is as important as building long term capabilities.

Most of the companies fail not during the recession but during the start of growth because they cannot sustain the market growth. When recession is recovered it’s a new normal.

Getting ready for the new normal: - Re-skill and get ready for the new normal, existing skills may not be enough, because it is going to be a new world.

• Recognizing what will change and what will remain the same

• Standing still will not be an option

• Building depth (Domain specialties) in addition to breadth (scaling people and business)

• Delivering where it matters – focus on operating efficiencies

Growth covers a lot of sins:

During recession non-performers can be easily identified and moved out.

Keep learning as a goal:

Low cost high value training – think – e-learning – internal

Good or bad times an organization need to invest on its employees

Good Times – it helps set better standard and keep employees engaged

Bad Times – It helps them for tougher times

If they stay they are stronger and connected

If they leave they are more employable.

Employees who experience genuine investment in themselves are ambassadors for life irrespective of they stay or leave.

"The author is a Management Graduate and holds 10 years of experience in the fields of  HR, Planning & Operations and  Business Analysis. Currently working as Manager - HR in an IT firm in coimbatore." You can reach him at rajesh9376@yahoo.com.