Is our workforce prepared to tide through Global Recession?

As we prepare to brace the effects of Recession induced from the western world, is our countries employer base prepared to take it. When Lehman Brother’s closed shop, there was a long line awaiting their turn to withdraw cash from a popular bank’s ATM at a remote village in South India. This goes to show that the Indian employed/ employee base is fully aware of the global scenarios. This was a few months ago, now a Construction Worker, is able to relate in his own way and mentions interest rates have gone up and hence construction activities are slowing down causing concern.

In the developed world we see people resorting to undue measures to run away from the facts (suicides due to loss of jobs). While we are aware of the facts, when reality hits us, we panic. This brings up the following questions which I’ve listed below for thoughts and deliberations,

• Are we prepared enough?
• Are we preparing our workforce enough?
• What are the organizations doing to prepare themselves?
• Is layoff the only answer to survive?
• What is the HR Community doing to prepare the organizations and the employees to sustain this difficult period?
• Well this is time for us to clean up, restructure and make our employees more responsible should I say?

It is time that there are HR Solutions to the People Effect. Let us deliberate your thoughts on these questions and keep the questions coming…

Emmanuel Justus
www.surgeforth.com

this is a good topic and deserves discussion. I dont believe that we prepare well for downtimes, we bask in the success and not look at what we need to do when things start falling apart ... reminds me of the ant and grasshopper story ...

Hi,

This is really a nice topic to discuss. Well this kind of recession has put up a question mark about the expansion strategies of the companies. During the boom period, companies focus on the increase in thier profit through expansion. But most of the time, they fail to keep a back up plan ready which they can use in case of failure of thier expansion plan. This kind of situation leads to lay off's and retrenchments which affects the workforce very badly leading to the flow of negativity among them. Hence to avoid these kinds of situation, companies should focus on the back up plans to minimize the effect of the failure of thier expansion plan on itself and on economy as a whole.

As far as current recession is concerned, well I would say that this sort of situation was not expected by most of the companies, hence neither the company nor the workforce was not prepared.

Organizations have been trying hard to save on cost. Some of the companies has opted for lay off's also. The rest has employed alternative ways of saving cost.

As far as survival is concerned, in my opinion, we need to look upon the complete picture to answer this question

Thats my view.


Keep posting


Swati

There are multiple approaches available for organizations to adopt in times of recession instead of just adopting layoff. I have summarized below some of the options .

1. In my previous organization during the time of dot com burst (2001 time frame) the top management took a salary cut of 25% and the rest of the organizations took a salary cut of 10%. Even after there was an economic necessity to let 5% of the workforce go of. At that time the middle management came up and said we will take another 2.5% salary cut to tide over this and we should take everybody in the organization along with us. This worked out well and as the market picked up the entire organization rallied behind their line managers as well as the senior management.

2. Another aspect to look at times like this is to look at the strengths and weakness of the employees and re-orient the people towards roles that are in line with their strengths. In recent study by IBM it was identified that organizations lack in their ability to identify the skills needed for their employees in times of constant change and building adaptable workforce. Instead of layoff organizations can focus on leverage people strength and put them in appropriate roles that can help the organizations tide over the recession period.

That's my two cents for the day....

ambal

Here is a an expression of thought by one of our own leaders on how they had done it in the past and I cannot agree with him more,

Go Kiss the World Of the Melt Down & IT Jobs

We in India are not expected to see the whole effect but I believe the western organizations and the western work force are much more prepared to face the down turn as you can see from some of the articles here. I've always wondered how do they prepare their work force for this. While in India, most of the participation of HR is in Seperation or Cost cutting measures.

Remember this is an interim fix, bad times are not here to stay long and we need to look for opportunities that arise here. The effects of these are left standing for a long time in a protential employer's mind as well! Again,

Are we preparing our work force to ensure organizations are better prepared when things turn around?

Yes, still looking for answers!

Emmanuel,

Thanks for posting nice hot topic..

One of the largest company, took precatutions almost 18months back. As I understand from few key people in that organization, the Sr. Management have defined few stratagies based on the financial analysts inputs.

Following few things which I have got to know..

- Reduced on International Travel
- Stopped hiring and replacing (only exception cases are considered).
- cost reduction operations
- Most of the events cost is reduced

By doing the above, the company didn't lay-off any as of now.

I feel, companies should have good market & financial analysts to work such concerns.

If it's a sudden disaster than Ambal's point 1 is more effective and then cutting avg. performing workforce. As employees salary cost to the company is 60 to 70%, all eyes will on that... ..

I can really feel the tought time for HR Managers/Heads and respective supervisors to boost the moral of employees..

Hope good times'll come soon...

KK