By Charlie Wonderlic
Do your employees feel secure in their jobs? It’s difficult for managers and supervisors to know for sure. In these tough economic times – especially if your company has recently experienced layoffs or there’s a whisper of staff cuts in the wind – it’s not uncommon for even the best employees to feel insecure and anxious about keeping their jobs, their livelihoods and their financial security.
Some of you might be saying to yourself: What’s the problem with a little insecurity? Employees will work all the harder if they’re not sure their jobs are totally secure, right? Wrong.
Studies show that employees who feel they’re teetering on the brink of a pink slip don’t tend to put in 110 percent to make sure that paycheck keeps coming. They don’t kick into high gear and perform, perform, perform. Rather, they tend withdraw. They de-invest in their jobs, lose interest in the good of their companies and worse, begin to look elsewhere for positions with more stability – even if that stability is perceived rather than actual. All of it is very bad news for employers, made even worse if you’re talking about star employees.
Tough economic times are a fact of life. What can you do to make sure economic uncertainty doesn’t creep into your workplace in the form of job uncertainty? Here are a few suggestions.
• Survey your employees
Once each year, take the pulse of your entire organization, whether you’ve got 12 or 12,000 employees. Along with asking questions about how they feel about their jobs, what they might do better, what you might do better and ways to improve the organization, make sure to include questions that get to the heart of how they feel about their own job stability.
• Create a development plan for each employee
This tells your employees that you’re thinking about them in the future tense, not simply in the present. You’re looking at where they might go from here. If your staff is small, this is the job of the HR director. For very large staffs, HR can direct the management of each department to do it. Basically, it’s a plan of attack for each employee in terms of how they might develop, grow and move up the ladder within your organization. By doing this, you’ll instill a sense of security in your employees.
• Invest in continuing training and education
In order to move up the ladder within an organization – or even to stay on top of the game in a current position – most employees need continuing education and training. Make sure your stars keep improving their skills and abilities. Send them to training for that new software, find out if conferences exist that would broaden their job perspective, make it possible for them to hone and improve their skills.
All of that said, there are no guarantees in the workplace, especially in tough economic times. Layoffs might occur. If that happens, bend over backwards to help your exiting employees find work. I know of one large company that recently had to lay off 1,000-plus employees. The company held a job fair for those employees, inviting other community businesses that had positions to fill. Almost all exiting employees got new jobs that day. Now that’s making the best of a bad situation.
By doing all of this, you’ll let your employees know they’re appreciated and valued. And that’s really the name of the game.
For more information, please contact:
William Geheren
Wonderlic, Inc.
1795 N. Butterfield Rd.
Libertyville, IL 60048-1212
800.323.3742
william.geheren@wonderlic.com
