HCM in the recession

 

    I’ve been thinking about anonymous’ comments, particularly in connection with my presentation next week on Globoforce’s webinar looking at using HCM, compensation & benefits, and employee recognition to drive positive change in the recession.  (Not that I think my thoughts can have as much impact as anonymous’ comments seem to infer!)

Actually, there’s not that much I can think of to add to some previous posts, so I thought that instead of redoing this from scratch, I’d simply refer to and link together some previous posts.

However, I will say that at the moment, I’m feeling a lot more cheerful than I have been – there’s a growing amount of good news about – even Robert Peston is seeing signs of green shoots of recovery!  But then everyone also seems to think that the next decade is going to be much harder than the last, so I would suggest the posts I link to below are likely to apply for some time to come.

The first thing to note is that it’s very difficult to predict exactly what is going to happen from this point on.  So the use of scenarios is probably an appropriate approach.  I think, to a large extent, which of these scenarios emerge will depend upon upon how much peoples’ attitudes, the role of business, or even of capitalism itself, changes within what has been called the global reset.

But no matter what happens, there seems to be two key roles for HR / HCM.   The first role is about managing through the downturn, responding to the impact of the recession.  This includes making layoffs and managing survivors, but also avoiding redundancies by, for example, introducing salary reductions.

The second role then is about navigating a way out of the recession - particularly as a lot of innovation tends to occur in difficult times.  Linked to this is taking advantage of the slack in the system (I know it may not feel as if there is) to increase the capability and the impact of HR.

Anonymous, I hope that helps!

 

Technorati Tags: Recession,dowturn,HCM

 

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