In today’s rapidly changing economic climate many executives are facing an acute dilemma. Among many other priorities, how do they make the people changes that they feel are necessary to rapidly improve performance whilst maintaining employee motivation and engagement?
There is now a wealth of evidence linking business performance and employee behaviour. A recent study1 of corporate performance revealed that two thirds of business units scoring above the median on employee engagement also scored above the median on performance whilst only one third of companies below the median on employee engagement scored above the median on performance.
Organisations in all industries and all sectors are preparing for the economic slowdown. Recent business trends show that confidence among firms is at its weakest level since the early 1990’s recession, executives are launching change programmes as a response to the economic slowdown and a quarter of organisations are planning redundancies within the next three months2.
Redundancies are one of the most traumatic events an employee can experience and the announcement or mere rumour of redundancies will invariably have an adverse impact on employee engagement. With levels of engagement3 in the UK found to be as little as 1 in 3 employees, many organisations start from a very low point.
1 BDO Stoy Hayward 2 CIPD/KPMG 3 Institute of Employment Studies
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