Top 15 Ideas For Employers During Uncertain Times

A recent report produced by a management institute revealed: "Although 20% of companies are looking at downsizing and retrenchments, 87 of CEOs and business owners believe their companies will survive the global financial crisis, and 81% say investment in employee development and retention will benefit their companies in the medium-term.”

The following are some ideas that may help you manage employees during uncertain times:

1. Clearly identify the most important business measures (KPIs = Key Performance Indicators) that will keep your business afloat during these challenging times. The critical measure of ‘Break-Even’ is a good start and you could then add other measures such as ‘Widgets Sold Per Month’ or ‘Cost Per Unit’ as appropriate. Publish these three or four measures everywhere in the form of very basic charts that any passerby can understand at a glance. Use key spaces in your office or site to display the charts and highlight the charts' importance by updating them every day. Discuss the results at every opportunity.

2. Training will be a major area of competitive advantage in the economic downturn. Start your training by teaching how the metrics of your business work (especially the basic financials) and how they can impact these measures day to day.

3. Don’t skimp on inductions as it will affect your bottom line. No matter how well-qualified your new employee is, they don’t understand your business, systems, or customers properly yet and this will cost you money if not handled properly. An effective induction doesn’t need to be expensive or onerous but it must be pre-planned and well thought out. A good induction is also one of the most important factors in retaining good employees.

4. Restructure communication so you measure, manage and communicate according to your KPI charts. Goals and metrics should be set in stone as part of your regular meeting agenda.

5. Get your order book out (or timesheets or billing records, etc) and look at them over time. Work out when are your busy and slow hours, days, weeks, months and seasons. Hire and roster accordingly. You may be able to sell this to employees as flexible workplace or family-friendly - why have them in at 8:30am if things don't get busy til 10:30am? Give your employees take their kids to school in the morning and arrive at work afterwards or perhaps not work Fridays when nothing happens anyway.

6. Consider outsourcing work or bring outsourced work in-house. Many HRwisdom members have outsourced work to suppliers all over Australia and overseas. In contrast, due to the volume of training materials being produced by his company, one of the HRwisdom contributing authors hired a graphic designer and no longer sent this work out externally.

7. Consider ‘loaning out’ employees to sit in-house with customers or suppliers for a period at a mark-up. This can be very lucrative and, in effect, reduces your labour costs whilst hanging on to valued employees during the downturn.

8. You may choose to let your staff telework from home in exchange for fewer hours in the office. Some employees will love this as you’re offering them a flexible workplace and letting them buy their time back. Some businesses even use this approach to minimise office space and equipment requirements for improved cashflow.

9. Ensure that holiday accruals are taken by employees as soon as possible to give you better cashflow.

10. Hiring fixed-term employees instead of full-time employees may help if you are unsure of what the future holds for your business.

11. Cut out paid overtime wherever possible. Manage workloads closely, use flexi-time, time off in lieu, annualised hours, introduce an afternoon shift, etc. In some circumstances, offsetting extra workloads with casual day-hire labour can be more cost effective (be careful though, as quality and service may be affected, not to mention disgruntled permanent employees).

12. Consider a boomerang approach and offer employees long-term unpaid leave so they can travel whilst your business rides out the storm. You may even assist them in this by providing them with business contacts and references.

13. Similar to the concept of Refer-A-Friend to find new employees, some businesses have had success offering Refer-A-Customer or sales commissions to staff even if they are not in sales roles.

14. Have operating systems in place in all areas and make sure they link to the KPI charts. The charts should link easily with the system and, if they don't, review why you do the activity at all. Streamline all your systems and ensure that all your people know them inside out. Note that operating systems do not need to be complicated. At the most basic level, McDonald's uses specially-sized scoops for serving fries to ensure employees consistently achieve the key targets of customer satisfaction (the fries present well in the container) and waste reduction (the scoop picks up exactly the right number of fries). A 32 page document-controlled procedure that no-one will read once it has been approved makes auditors happy but it is not a good system.

15. Apply performance-based pay, incentives, or bonuses to every job. Note that these can be non-financial incentives. Ideally, all incentives should be results of pre-determined outcomes linked to the business’s key performance indicators. Celebrate small and big wins and use these celebrations to focus staff on doing the things that have the biggest impact on your key measures.

For more free staff management ideas and resources, visit: HRwisdom.com.au.