Once a recession of any sort impacts, it is often employee numbers and morale that can suffer. Conversely, your professionals are arguably your most precious resource during any commercial environment, and this is particularly true within economic downturns. It will be your employees that are best poised to assist the business in recovering, maintaining and expanding turnover through the cycle. So how do you make the most of your employees during this period and make HR part of the solution to your company’s response? Below are some steps to ensure that your people are protected and continue to perform during the downturn.

Realistic assessments
Before you make any major decisions regarding your workforce, it is crucial that you conduct a realistic appraisal of the current position of your business and its employees. Different industries and business models will be affected in different ways, so any progressive strategy needs to be firmly rooted in the realities of the situation. It can also be helpful to include any direct competitors within this assessment, as their situation can be viewed relative to your own, and may offer some insights into the next steps that your company takes.

Restructuring and resource planning
It may be that your company needs to undergo a process of restructuring in order to best compete against the demands of a changing marketplace. Any restructuring operation must be clearly thought through and deliberate, as it may well involve the roles and careers of people within the organization. A clear resource planning document should be originated, so that you can see and justify which key skills, individuals and teams are central to the company’s future growth.

From this point, you can then begin to take steps to make the necessary adjustments to the business from a resource perspective. If managed correctly, an intelligent restructure can make a huge difference to your company’s performance and collective outlook, by tightening up unproductive areas that may otherwise remain unchecked.

Good communication lines
Within any time of change, it is crucial that you maintain clear and open channels of communication with all staff. Economic downturns are worrying times for everyone, particularly when there is a possibility of redundancies, so establishing regular communication regarding your company’s current and intended responses will help everyone involved understand the position for what it is, rather than allowing a culture of fear and uncertainly to develop, which will have a counterproductive effect on both morale and performance.

Use your recruitment company
A professional recruitment consultancy can be a valuable ally in addressing the situation from a Human Resource point of view. Recruitment consultancies have a good finger on the pulse of industry, and will be able to offer you an overall perspective on the markets. In addition, they will know where redundancies are occurring, and the scale of them, enabling you to understand your market position better. Within times like these, there is generally a flood of talented individuals being released onto the market, and a good consultancy will be able to offer specialist advice on how to access these people, should your resource planning require fresh expertise.

Alternative work arrangements
To paraphrase Charles Darwin, it is not necessarily the biggest companies that survive, but the ones that are most responsive to change. With this in mind, it may be a good idea to examine the possibility of changing the working arrangements of individuals within your business. With technologies that enable employees to work from virtually any location, more organisations will consider flexible work arrangements as increasingly viable. Similarly, savvy businesses are providing employees with the tools and flexibility to work in a number of arrangements, including part or flextime, telecommuting or job sharing.

Emphasising Creative Benefits and Incentives
When economies are not booming, companies and individuals look to different ways to incentivise and motivate staff. It may not be currently realistic to offer large bonuses to individuals that perform well, because the pool from which the bonuses are taken may itself have shrunk. It is up to management therefore, to create new and creative methods of keeping employees and teams focused on the levels of productivity required to enable your company to remain competitive. At times like these, good leadership and creative thinking have never been more vital – click on the links to read our articles on developing your teams in both these areas.

Plan for a brighter future
Early signs seem to indicate that the markets are already starting to react positively to recent government steps, although it will be some time before markets begin to operate within normal trading conditions. The economic downturn is part of a cycle however, and should therefore be treated as such. By accurately assessing your company’s resource needs, streamlining your processes, consulting with experts in their field and creating alternative strategies, you can expect to emerge a more productive, profitable and experienced company as a result.