Motivate staff in uncertain times

Companies around the world, even in the UAE, are preparing themselves for uncertain times ahead. With recession fears, slowing sales and unemployment being daily news, employees are bound to feel insecure. But low morale or insecurity are often hidden, contributing to a high-stress work environment, wasted energy and low productivity. This is particularly true for companies looking to merge or consolidate operations. Companies must take concrete steps to acknowledge and manage this situation.

To start, understand whether your organisation is dealing with low employee morale. The HR and functional heads should be able to give you a dip stick of employee apprehensions.

Other tell-tale signs include rumours circulating within the company, employees enquiring discreetly on the company's financial condition and in the worst case, customers reporting employee dissatisfaction.

The first step is to acknowledge the problem, and have a joint meeting of all senior management. Clearly communicate what you sense about the morale and clarify short term/ mid term goals. Draw up a personal note to be circulated to all employees from the CEO's desk. Ask functional heads to create a similar agenda and talk to employees in the monthly meetings. These meetings are aimed at communicating future plans, building openness, answering queries and enhancing credibility.

Next, identify strategic projects/initiatives that you feel have long term potential and depute key employees on it. This also makes business sense as it provides you with a pipeline of products that you can depend on in a downturn. Typically, these initiatives should not require large investments, and should aim for specific financial benefits.

Third, celebrate organisational achievement - at a team and individual level. Again, the point is not to expend large sums of money, as much as provide public recognition to enhance individual visibility.

Fourth, take the opportunity to develop knowledge sharing forums. Few companies cross pollinate ideas even in the best of times. However, in tough times, any process, project or initiative can do with more ideas. Formally announce inter-departmental knowledge sharing forums where real problems are shared, solutions evolved and knowledge is transferred. Invite key employees to give lectures on specific topics aimed at building the company's core competence. Leverage e-learning as a cost effective capability building mechanism. While most companies cut down on training budgets during such times, they miss the opportunity to invest in the future.

Finally, plan well before introducing any changes to roles and structures. This includes structured communication exercises, managing employee expectations, planning for dissatisfaction and helping people focus on the challenges ahead. Disruptive change can potentially lead to attrition of key people and a loss of faith in leadership.

Recent events have proven that the future can never be predicted, even by the so-called 'experts'. But you can prepare for the uncertainty by leveraging a motivated, talent team.

- Sanjiv Anand is Managing Director and Kartik Varma is Engagement Manager at Cedar Management Consulting International.