Silvia Hewlett: What we found in this research, and we did all kinds of strategy sessions, focus groups and interviews with talent managers, there were eight things you could do to pump up morale and massively improve motivation and actually figure out how to retain and fully utilize the talent you have. They range from involving them in recreating pride and purpose, in terms of the mission of your company.
In some of the our more broken sectors, just think of financial services for instance, there's a tremendous sense that the entire business model is broken, and where do you go next for robust profits? But if you're also been frozen out and not talked and not involved in the process, you yourself don't feel any ownership in terms of where the company may or not may be going. Involving your top talent in the restructuring, refocusing, recreation of purpose and mission are very important.
So it ranges from that to figuring out how to help people, your top people and also yourself, with the body blows. There's tremendous impact on health and well being that's gone on in this recession. We measured a lot of this, whether it's depression or compromised immune systems. There are really egregious impacts on the body that has gone on in this last 12-month period.
Ernst & Young has an amazing program called Pinnacles which is really reaching out and helping them their top professionals to work on their wellness and their vitality and resilience. And that, I think, is particularly valuable this year.
So these eight interventions, I think all of them have many case examples, they are things that companies are trying but it's about feeding the cell, restoring the spirits, knitting together the motivation of the folks that you are totally reliant on for the next stage.
Discuss
Elizabeth Reid on June 19, 2009, 8:24 PM
Getting companies to care about their employees as human beings is a great idea. I commend Ms. Hewlett for her work on this. In the past, most companies only acted to help and protect their workers because the were forced to by legislation and reform. More and more of them have done so voluntarily with day care programs, flex time, and improved benefits to name a few. I wonder if these things are being tossed aside as the economy has weakened. I hope not. The bottom line is this: if you treat people poorly, they will perform poorly. I have witnessed this.
The morale at my old office was so low that the atmosphere was poisoned. A boss that is constantly critical and hovering is an ineffective one. A supervisor that deals with issues humanely and with civility will have happier and thus, better workers. We need to be supportive of eachother during hard times and things will turn out much better for all involved.
Jessica Liebman on July 27, 2009, 12:13 PM
It’s funny because during the recession, the things that Hewlett is talking about go to the bottom of most companies’ priority lists. How can you justify spending money on a company bar-b-q when you just came out with terrible quarter earnings? I agree with Hewlett— it’s absolutely necessary to look at the “big picture.” I worked at a company that’s struggling, and every day they continued to take away the perks that made working there valuable. It destroyed morale and in turn, destroyed the brand of the company.
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