The Lifeline

Tough times call for tough measures, but a company’s culture must always be given priority to ensure continuous business success.

- Colin D Ellis

An economic slowdown leads to a drop in sales and profits, hampers manufacturing, reduces business investment and consumer spending, results in loss of jobs, and also limits hiring.

These are the effects that we are seeing in the UK now and the continuous debate over Brexit continues, with no real end in sight. The Small Business Prices Index keeps a running total of job losses to date, and as of the end of September 2019, it is over 420,000.*

But this is not a blog about Brexit—there have been far too many of those already—it is a blog about how to retain, motivate, and inspire people in times of hardship, slowdown, or when operating costs are limited.

Every organisation, regardless of sector or country, will go through periods where cash is not readily available for hiring new people or for developing existing ones. Yet, it is critically important during this time to not only retain good people, but also to maintain performance so that things do not get worse.

Senior managers will say things like ‘we need to do more with less’ as a way of trying to rally staff, when the reality is, the staff is often overburdened with pointless projects or worse, they see the leadership team acting in opposition to this. Offsites and consultants to tell them what they already know are seen as essential activities, whilst retaining newspapers and celebrations are not.