As the governor of the Bank of England uses the "R" word, recession, there is increasingly a focus on how businesses can cut costs and streamline operations. Stephen Archer explains how to address and lead staff during these times to increase retention as well as commercial effectiveness.

The current turmoil in the financial markets, and now with it moving into the more general economy, recession is certainly in the air. Within companies the talk is about redundancies, cost cutting and streamlining operations. Much of the 'advice' being given has an operational emphasis, with less focus on the impact on the employees that remain within troubled organisations, who are no doubt feeling pretty insecure about their future careers.

Employees are in tune with the economic climate and the impact this will be having on the company in which they work. They will be feeling worried about their job security and morale will be at a low ebb. But, one thing is for certain, poor morale will be exacerbated if leadership has allowed morale to slip and even more so if it participates in the low morale.

There is a clear link between employee motivation levels and business productivity and businesses simply cannot afford to let their effectiveness slip in these difficult times. Teams need to better motivated, correctly motivated and led with better focus than before to ensure they stay afloat in such times.

Now is certainly not the time to cut back on the training and development of staff - quite the opposite, leaders need to invest in their people more than ever. If training is pushed aside, staff will feel as if promises to them have been broken; their self-esteem will suffer and they will end up leaving the company.

Continued on HRZone [1]