Employee Motivation during Challenging Times

During good times, if an employee is compensated fairly, has good working atmosphere, and has the ability to grow in their career, the employee will probably continue to be a valuable employee during difficult times.

I think that the same is true during difficult time.

As the company or other companies are forced to make cuts in either salaries and/or jobs, the employee will be accepting of the financial changes so long as the compensation is inline with what other companies are paying for the same work and that they can see that it was done consistent with the business survival.

Even during challenging times, there is an opportunity to learn. These business cycles happen on a regular basis and thus it is essential to learn how to navigate through them. So it is important that you explain to employees what you are doing and why you are doing them to help the company survive the challenging times. So working for a company that is in trouble during good times is good practice for dealing with challenging times in a good company.

It's maintaining the good working environment that is key during challenging times. First, if you have to cut jobs and lay people off, remember that these are human beings and they have done nothing wrong. So treat them with respect. Also, you need for people to get through the grieving process. Let everyone take a day to absorb and morn the losses. But to get them beyond this point, you need to have a plan that shows why you did what you did and who is going to cover what and what this will mean for the future including delaying or cancelling projects/programs to be consistent with the resources available. Note that if you just keep your buddies around in positions that they don't excel at for the sake of keeping them employed, your employees will notice and have far less respect for you. Also remember that acknowledging each person specific contribution either in front of their peers or privately has major motivating powers and costs you nothing. It 's ok to even acknowledge the hard work of the people who left and how there contributions live on in the company that survives. Still take time to celebrate the groups and individual accomplishments even with a scaled back budget. And above all else be positive yourself without being unrealistic. The culture of a company usually prervades from the top down. Avoid saying things like "You are likely to have a job." since this implies that they can't get work elsewhere and they should leave.

If you start an employee satisfaction survey during good times, you can see how effective you are managing through bad times. If you don't have an employee satisfaction survey, ask your HR person how many discussions per week they are having with employees how are unhappy about the situation. If you did a good job explaining the action then the HR person should be able to work on other issues otherwise they are going to spend their time explaining what you didn't say or do.