Motivating employees during recession

In today’s tough corporate times, one of the biggest challenges faced by the top management corporates is that of handling a competent yet shrunk workforce whilst delivering the utmost quality of work. Attracting and retaining quality talent is the key to build a top workforce; this is challenged during recessionary times when the focus shifts slightly to motivating the existing force to perform and meet ends, rather than have progress at the heart of things. During an economic slowdown, employees have many fears bottled up and growing inside them. To enlist a few:

1. Survivor’s guilt: Recent psycho-analytic reports have revealed that those who have survived the chopper often feel guilty about it. The need re-instilling faith in their own abilities that the quality and value of their work is top notch and deserves recognition. Also, one has to make them feel secure in spite of them seeing their friends & colleagues being given the pink slip.


2. Apprehensions of external factors: Many employees fear that the external facets such as company closure, re-haul of complete workforce, economic crisis affecting payments amongst others would lead to them getting their monthly pay cheques.

3. Floating rumours, more piling up work, less motivation: Most employees are reviewing as to how their bosses are handling the situation and the additional work. They need to be pepped up because their rampant fears are bringing them down. Moreover, there are creepy elements in every organization who float rumours at other’s emotional deprivation, leading to wide-spread anguish and guessing game of “who is going next”

4. Marketing and sales not in-sync with times: No matter what, the company had to put up a brave face in front of clients, customers, contractors and investors that their roots are strong enough to weather the storm. If the management does not explain this to the employees top down, the perception would be quite wrong.

The idea is not to simply give an inspirational lecture, or take the team out for a champagne and beer lunch. The idea is to address their fears and make them competitive again for company’s sakes and in their own sphere for the marketplace. How long would the twenty pitchers of good German beer drown the sorrows of cash crunch and failing to meet rent? An evening of movies and bowling might look good on the agenda and everyone might pretend to lap it up, but the emotional state of affairs would really let the worker be at ease doing this.

I have found the following measures to be highly effective.

1. Guilt, fear, paranoia is comprehensible and give it time: Most people would be going through these feelings right now, and performance under such severe stress levels is difficult. Give this time, be empathetic and create flexible boundaries where such sentiments could be shared. Device a strategy to overpower these emotions and work with (and not against each other) to see the testing times through.

2. Be understanding, but don’t be an agony aunt: Most employees run to their bosses every ten minutes these days and continue with the “oh, isn’t it awful that the markets crashed” and “oh my God, the price of potatoes has gone up ten fold”. Well, the boss probably has more money invested thus suffered a bigger loss due to the market crash, and chances are that potatoes are similarly priced in the supermarket where the boss shops. So, bring a halt to that and invest time wisely into getting the work done. If in spite of all efforts an employee can’t be motivated to concentrate on work and talks about the bad times too much, in all probability he is too focussed on things around than the work he is being paid for.

3. Lead by setting an example: Remember the case study discussions during your B-school lectures when you would spring your point forth with excessive passion on how you want to make a difference to the global economic scenario? Or remember watching TV on how some distinguished faces talk about changing the world and international peace & harmony? Somewhere, whilst satisfying a job description, this fervour died down. Well, now is the time to actually put it in action. Forget what your job specification says; forget how you are to review your subordinates and co-workers; simply, be pro-active & for the first time (B-school promises not withstanding) think outside the box.

4. Set targets, let the employees know their distinctive roles: Yes, the tough times have made you pull the plug on many; those remaining are your crème de-la-crème. Make sure THEY know this fact. Make them feel important and special. And ensure this aspect does not go cause inflated egos; set fair targets for the turbulent times and account each worker for it.

5. Don’t excuse poor performance due to lacking effort: You wouldn’t do that in an ideal scenario, would you? Good times or bad, there is no excuse for lacking effort. And that should be the norm even if the worker in question has been your top dog

6. Good service, good relations, good strategy: One has often heard the best time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining bright- you’d need it when the rains come pouring. So, in tough times, as a collective unit, encourage your team to keep chin up and weather the tough times. Provide top quality customer services; the intra company relations should be top notch, and this is the time to lay the platform for future course of action. Remember, what comes down will go up. So pick up the sticks and be prepared, for the good times maybe a fair way off, they are still foreseeable.

Lastly, whatever you do, please don’t panic. You may take a hit, but you have to learn to survive. Look forward, and make your employees do the same. Keeping the morale high is one of the toughest jobs a manager would ever face. Given that the current crop of high flying managers have encountered easy profits primarily, this would be tougher. Learn to operate as collective unit- togetherness would help face monstrosities better than solitude!