A few recent articles discuss the importance of being proactive in the areas of employee communications and employee engagement:
- The Chicago Tribune ran an article discussing different strategies employers are using to maintain healthy communication channels with their employees: “As counterintuitive as it may seem to many business owners, communicating openly and regularly is more important than ever during times of uncertainty, experts said.”
- Employee Benefit News Canada reports on the recently released Watson Wyatt 2008/2009 WorkCanada Report. The article quotes Watson Wyatt’s Debra Horsfield:
Improving employee engagement will help drive business results in the long run by improving employee commitment to corporate goals and generating exceptional individual performance and productivity.
- A piece in Forbes discusses unique ideas for both employee engagement and communications (thanks to David Ballard for the reference to this article, which I first saw via his Twitter feed).
The thread connecting the three articles is the idea that engaging employees through direct and honest communications is critical not only to successfully navigating the current economic environment, but also for building an organization that will emerge stronger once the economy turns around. The conclusion of the article in Forbes puts it quite well:
Companies that handle their employees with the right care can come out of tough times with more loyal and appreciative workers than they started with. No one else will.
Never waste a good recession!
D.Reiss
April 16, 2009
Regular, proactive, honest communications with employees is always important but especially when employees are scared about the economy and the possibility of job loss. Scared, underinformed employees often do not invest their best efforts to advance an organization’s goals because the employees may feel that their efforts will be for naught anyway (i.e., they convince themselves that failure/job loss is inevitable in this economic environment, and prepare themselves for this inevitability). This of course can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Forward-thinking employers can prevent such malaise by regularly and realistically communicating with employees. In addition, over the longer term, employees will come to trust such employers to treat them fairly, in good times as well as in bad. In return, these employees may become the most loyal to the organization, going the extra mile and/or sacrificing on its behalf.