It is highly probable that every HR department within the UK will come under an increasing pressure to create more cost efficiencies during 2009. This will certainly make for a challenging year for HR professionals, although history has proven that these periods can often significantly develop an HR policy and expand its remit once the economy begins to pick up.

As the economist Paul Romer once said, "A crisis is a terrible thing to waste', and history has proven time and time again that successful businesses are not necessarily the biggest, but the ones that are most responsive to change. As the operations of HR Departments across the UK become required to deliver mitigation against the economic downturn, below is a guide to how your business might view, manage and defend its most valuable resource during 2009.

Establish your critical mass

Within every business, there is a core cost to output ratio that needs to be kept keenly balanced if the company is to remain competitive. This is true regardless of the commercial climate, but it is especially true at a time of economic uncertainty.

Within boom times, it becomes possible to take a slightly broader, more investment oriented approach to commercial objectives and the resources needed to fulfill against them, although the current situation requires an altogether more focused approach. By defining your own cost to output ratios by department, you will be able to make an accurate assessment of the critical mass of individuals needed to keep the business driven.

Defending your position from above

As someone with a responsibility for the Human Resources decisions within your company, there is a possibility that you may be required to provide a robust defence for the maintenance of HR strategy and personnel levels.

Using the critical mass approach, you can make fairly authoritative decisions about which employees are key to the company's future plans, although if you are under pressure to make changes that you don't agree with, be sure to present an alternative business case that supports your perspective. Effective HR is all about ensuring the business has all the professional support it requires to prosper, and shedding the wrong people can be a destabilizing influence on any company.

Insulate your core

Having evaluated your core human resource requirements through the prism of an economic downturn, it is imperative that the individuals whom the company considers valuable are kept happy and motivated. There is a camaraderie and focus that can develop within businesses experiencing choppy commercial waters, and this can be encouraged with the right incentives to blossom within your own company.

Ensure that you recognise, reward and continue to train your best people - it will be these people that you will need to depend on to deliver results at a time of most critical need.

Maintain a dynamic recruitment policy

As contrary as it might seem to develop an active recruitment policy during a period of mass redundancies, research has proven time and time again that effective recruitment can be a formidable foil to any downturn, and can help your company recover quicker when business picks up.

Fuelled by redundancies, the job market has become a pool of opportunity, as many talented individuals will be looking to ply their trade elsewhere. Companies with an eye on what talent is available are perfectly poised to add professionals to their teams who might actually increase your productivity levels and revenues during these difficult times.

Turning perm into temp, and vice versa

As part of your assessment into the quality and performance of employees within the business, you may see an opportunity for certain individuals to revisit the nature of their working relationship with the company. It may be expedient in the short term to revaluate and recast certain permanent roles as temporary, although your core employees will almost always be permanent.

Similarly, there may be sound economic reasons to bring a talented temporary employee in-house, perhaps creating cost efficiencies and engendering company loyalty at the same time. Performance related bonuses are a reliable way of aligning the motivation of both permanent and temporary employees with that of your company's business objectives.

Squeezing more out of less

There is little doubt that you may be called on to make more out of existing or diminishing resources within the workplace over the next 12 months or so. As the old adage suggests however, less can indeed be more, providing that you have identified the key players within your organisation that can roll their sleeves up, go the extra mile for the business, and can inspire others to also do so.

A back to basics approach, whereby a company can return to its fundamental revenue streams and look at ways of working smarter to deliver these better is no bad thing at any stage in the economic cycle. Effective organization and motivational skills are of paramount importance in order to carry the momentum of your business forward.

Catching the next wave

Commercial circumstances are always benchmarked by, and relative to, the period before them. The UK has enjoyed a period of comparative stability and prosperity for over a decade prior to the systemic banking failure of 2008, and despite Gordon Brown's pledge as Chancellor, a boom is always both preceded and followed by a period of comparative bust.

By refining the roles and business goals within your departments however, and translating these into measurable, incentivised objectives for key personnel, you can actually create a company that is more profitable, streamlined and prepared when the economy inevitably recovers. After all, what comes down must, eventually, go back up.