Answer to last month's business dilemma - keeping staff engaged
Business dilemma answer – keeping staff engaged
In the current economic climate, many businesses are naturally focusing on the financials, but the danger in that situation is that staff engagement begins to suffer. CHPD expert and senior consultant, Dan White, outlines just what you can do to maintain staff engagement.
What makes business difficult at the best of times is a complex interplay between volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity and delayed feedback (VUCAD). The current business environment is creating high VUCAD conditions which stretch the abilities of organisations and their leaders. The conditions, if not unprecedented are certainly rare and as such many of us are dealing with the unknown. For example, Hank Paulson might not have let Lehman Brothers go bankrupt had he known the ramifications of that decision. But high VUCAD conditions make things like that very hard to predict.
As such our leaders are out on a limb at present. They can’t be sure what is around the corner and the may not be able to predict the outcomes of their decisions with their normal accuracy. This will be stressful, and under stressful conditions we typically retreat to what we know, and what we can control. The short-term, the ‘here and now and the bottom line can suddenly become a fixation. This is often lauded by organisations for whom every last dollar is sacred, and reinforced by messages from the top. The effect is for managers and leaders to squeeze effort from the people; not hard given the very obvious burning platform that exists. The focus is on the short-term achievement, and for some employees this will be stimulating and exciting, if somewhat exhausting after a while. Those driven by challenge, crisis and a strong goal orientation might actually find these economic conditions stimulating. Provided they feel as though their roles are safe. For these individuals the moment they sense uncertainty that their hard work will be insufficient to save their jobs, they may switch that effort elsewhere. So to retain them think abut Shakespeare’s Henry V, who even in the face of overwhelming adversity at Agincourt, showed his belief in victory, albeit hard fought.
The bigger challenge for organisations under the current economic conditions are those employees who aren’t motivated do or die heroics. A sizeable part of your workforce is likely to be motivated by more long-term factors such as technical excellence, social cohesion and feelings of autonomy and control. For them these conditions, where each nose is pressed further to the grindstone, can become thoroughly demotivating. Many large organisations will, for example, spend a lot of time and energy encouraging their people to act as partners and consultants to their clients, fostering long term, trust based relationships. The challenge is to maintain relationships like this when your organisation needs you to chase every dollar and hunt down every deal. By pushing your people to sell, sell, sell you can demotivate your people as well as irritate your customers.
The current economic climate can be seen as pressure in the system, it has to be released somewhere. For leaders it may be through exerting pressure on their people in an effort to make the problem (results) go away. If managers and leaders can be seen pushing targets (long since rendered unrealistic), encouraging people to stay late, axing all activity but that associated with immediate revenue generation, then it is likely that the people in those teams will be experiencing pressure. They may not leave (they may not have anywhere to go) but their productivity, motivation and energy could plummet, precisely at the time when you can’t afford it to. The trick for organisations is to spot these short-term reactions and support their leaders and managers to understand that there is more than one way to respond to a credit crunch. The alternative to short-term reaction is longer-term preparation. For example, Asian car makers are preparing for the next US economic boom by lining up smaller, economical trucks. This category reflects one of the last great bastions of Detroit, and Nissan, Toyota and others are lining up ready to take on the ‘big three’ when market conditions swing back in a few years.
In the short term only the most exceptional organisations can be expected to grow turnover, profit and market share. But organisations that can isolate minimum turnover and profit requirements in order to maintain healthy innovation and a reasonably safe employment environment, talk about these confidently and in the meantime excite their workforce about stealing market share will be well placed to emerge from this particular down turn, and probably, with most of their talent intact and more loyal than when they went into it.