7 Human Resource Strategies to Use in a Recession

By Cindy Risling

By now most economists and armchair experts agree we're in a recession. What both the educated and lay pundits find more difficult to agree upon are the answers to troubling questions like "How deep will the recession be?" and "How long will it last?" Estimates for recovery vary wildly from the blackly dismal to the rosily optimistic. It seems the only thing we can know for sure is that no one really knows.

With the future so uncertain, business publications have taken to promoting the philosophy that recessions create opportunity... at least for those with the moxie to make success happen. While this may come across to some as a tired cheerleading attempt, there is soundness to the ideology. Even during the Great Depression companies like Kellogg's, Proctor & Gamble and Chevrolet did more than survive, they excelled. The people who steered their winning course did so with a combination of courage and inventiveness. In other words, they used moxie.

So where do you start? What kind of changes will ensure your company succeeds? Below are seven human resource strategies that are easy to implement and can make a big difference.

1.) Lead with Confidence - During these troubling financial times, it's natural to want to take the backseat until the road ahead becomes clear. However, companies need strong leadership to prosper, now more than ever. Providing direction inspires confidence in your employees and helps build a faithful staff. Businesses that lead effectively now will retain loyal staff to meet their present and future challenges.

2.) Communicate effectively - Making sure people have the information they need is the foundation for any good relationship. Being honest and open with employees is especially important at a time when they may be dealing with serious concerns outside of the office. Present worries might include a laid off spouse, the possibility of their own layoff, fears about not being able to pay the bills, etc. As their leader you have the responsibility to lessen any stress they might be feeling by communicating openly about the outlook for staff members at your company. Don't forget to communicate frequently because your employees' financial positions might be changing quickly right now.

3.) Recruit purposefully - The anticipated global shortage of workers has not gone away: it has just been postponed. The reason? Baby boomers are choosing to work a little longer because their retirement savings have been deflated. Once the market comes back fully, you should expect a mass exodus as the boomers leave the workforce. Companies who make severe staffing cuts and don't keep their HR people connected to potential hires will be caught severely short staffed. Savvy companies have a great opportunity right now to hire talented people who have been down-sized by other organizations.

4.) Make cuts strategically - Consider outsourcing the functions you can to help reduce costs, but don't forget to take good care of any employees you might eliminate. Generous packages create goodwill and increase loyalty from those who remain. What's more, the departing employees just might be more willing to return to work when times are better and your company faces the global staffing shortages that the recession postponed. Generous packages might seem out of the question in tight times but you should give serious consideration to offering the maximum that you can. Your company will be better able to recruit new staff in the future if its reputation is bolstered by how it treated people during the 2009 recession.

5.) Be strategic about delivering PD - Use your slower times to sharpen the skills, technical and personal, of your employees. This will help keep staff members engaged and equip them to provide the exceptional service that can sustain your company now and contribute to its prosperity later (see 6).

6.) Take great care of your customers - Remember the days when you attended networking events to stay connected, while secretly hoping you would not get too many new engagements because you did not know where you would find the staff, time or energy to provide the service? It all seems like a distant memory but it was probably less than 12 months ago.

What most business owners wouldn't do if they could just have that problem again!

Instead you're seeing business decline and you're wondering how to regain it. Part of the answer is in training your people to be customer service specialists. Step back to the times when you only hired people who would go the extra mile to give your customers exceptional experiences with your company. Re-new your company's customer focus now!

7.) Avoid layoffs with creative strategies - Before you cut staff, consider alternative ways to save money while still saving jobs. A day off without pay, work sharing arrangements, worker sharing with other companies, salary cut-backs, government assistance programs - these are only a few of the numerous possibilities that may work for you and your employees. Get creative!

Whether you consider yourself to have moxie or not, the current recession calls for courageous and inventive thinking. Implementing ideas like the seven above can not only help your company weather this global storm, but position it for full sail ahead when the storm has passed.

About the Author: Cindy Risling is Human Resources professional with 20 years of experience and she assists business owners by helping them shore up their Human Resources practices.

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Howard Henson & Associates, Inc.

Marketing - Public Relations - Grapic Design - Web Design - Printing - Laminating

Larry Henson, President In Business Since 1974 405-471-4888

Need Vs. Want

Advertising Blog

Exploring the idea of frugality, led me to think about another aspect of the new advertising mantra, need vs. want.

The new marketing wisdom dictates that we frame our advertising efforts in terms of “need.” “Want” is out. With gross sales down, the combined forces of the advertising world did some navel gazing and decided, merchandise isn’t moving, the consumer doesn’t want our stuff anymore.

And a collective chorus erupted, “Hallelujah, they’re only buying stuff they need. We shall sell need.”

Yeah, white papers have been written on this.

But none of them define the bugaboos, need or want.

Outside of trips to the grocery store while I was in college, bulk rice, or trips to the thrift store in the same period, something to cover my body, I cannot think of many purchases based on pure need. Yes, I have a house, but I certainly could survive in a smaller one. Yes, I have a car, actually a truck a big, but I could survive with a much smaller one, or none at all. A whole lot of the stuff I have cannot be justified on need. My flat screen, don’t need it. Stereo, MP3 player, don’t need it. Camera, don’t need it. Lawn and accompanying lawnmower and garden tools, don’t need it. Second set of dishes for holidays, don’t need it. Glasses, old jars would functionally do the trick. Closet full of clothes as opposed to a drawer full, don’t need them. Glass of wine in the evening, don’t need it. Vacation and dinner out, who are we kidding?

Listen, marketing is not, will not, and never will be about merely answering customers “needs.” That is a cop out on the part of marketers. It is our job to create “want,” pure and simple. Then to give customers a menu of product benefits, real and imagined, that allow them to justify that want and rationalize it as a need.

Don’t go all puritanical on me here. There is no biological need for music, art, or laughter. But life without them would be so Hobbesian.

Creating desire isn’t an evil trait of marketers. It is what we do. We add value to a product or service, above and beyond mere biological necessity. Selling need is like offering a thirsty man water, outside of the Sahara, a recipe for lousy market share and zero profit margin.

Let’s get back to basics. Advertising must add value above and beyond the inherent product. It must position the product as superior within its field, it must present benefits and value that surpass mere price point. Sure, there are some needs, for example, the customer needs a copier to conduct business, but why yours? Sure he needs lunch, why yours? Given a plethora of products that meet the customer’s need, it’s want that makes the sale.

Howard Henson & Associates, Inc.

Marketing - Public Relations - Grapic Design - Web Design - Printing - Laminating

Larry Henson, President In Business Since 1974 405-471-4888

Pinhead Pricing

Blog – Week of May 24, 2009

Pinhead Pricing

Econ 101, you have a supply line and a demand line.

They meet at a point.

This is the blessed state of equilibrium. Voila, the price has been determined and established with absolute academic rigor.

Theoretically of course.

Turns our pricing only works like that on chalkboards, there are a couple of Nobel Prize winning economists wandering around today, hopefully unemployed but I doubt it, who applied their price theories very precisely to everything in the United States. Because of their brilliance at the chalkboard, they convinced a lot of bankers and hedge fund managers to invest according to their theories. A banking crisis was born.

Every real world business owner, or person who has ever run a garage sale, knows the truth. Prices are determined by what the customer can and will pay. Supply and demand matter, but so do a lot of other things, otherwise the Rolex watch would be extinct, just like T Rex.

Prices are sticky. Turns out, people judge the relative worth of items by preconceived idea of cost. Thus there was a time when virtually no one would pay $5 for a cup of coffee in a paper cup. Then came a time, when no one who was anyone would buy a $1.25 cup of coffee in a paper cup, we had to have that $5 cup. Now we make it ourselves for $1.25 a pot.

This has to do with anchors. An anchor is the price at which you last actively considered the price of an item, not just when you saw the price, but thought about it. Take jeans, you need some, there is a pair for $80. In fact you look around at several stores and see lots of jeans for about $80. This becomes your anchor. Now when you come across the same pair for $50, you think it is a pretty good deal.

Note, you do not know the supply curve. You have no way to know that stock is piling up in a warehouse in Taiwan. You don’t know that supply is strong or weak. You don’t know the cost of production or distribution. Econ theory claims all this information is contained in the price, so you are in fact rational to buy the $50 jeans; a little truth there, but it isn’t really how customers operate.

Thus every jewelry salesman knows, first show the customer the most expensive piece of jewelry in the category, or at least one far more expensive than the soon to be newlyweds could ever afford. This sets their anchor high. Later when they pay twice what they expected, it seems to be a terrific bargain. They anchored high, and it shifted their value perception.

I’m not trying to suggest being manipulative. The point here is understanding what drives opinions on pricing. Dan Ariely wrote a thought provoking book, “Predictably Irrational” about how consumers really act in the marketplace. It’s worth reading.

Howard Henson & Associates, Inc.

Marketing - Public Relations - Grapic Design - Web Design - Printing - Laminating

Larry Henson, President In Business Since 1974 405-471-4888

What Makes Customers Tick?

Faced with a long-term client that wasn’t buying our latest ideas, we were a little tired of redoing the same ad for 15 years, a cohort got this bright idea, let’s do some research. Bingo.

A pricey research report was out of the question. But we had a telephone.

With a list of 150 customers, we developed a list of questions and made calls. Our findings weren’t earth shattering, but they were helpful in developing a truly client centered message. The process brought us, the client and the customer closer together. Now we had a page to work on, a target to reach.

Often due to lack of funds and time, those of us in small business neglect market research. Post purchase surveys are fine, but have a low response rate. On-line surveys have a lower response rate. Being pleasant callers, we had an almost 100% response from our randomly selected sample.

The knowledge gained by this do-it-yourself project has convinced me that at least twice a year, every business should conduct a real person telephone survey of customer satisfaction and purchase reasoning. Even a small sample will help to refine your marketing and business models immeasurably. The more senior the callers, the better the information is going to be,; because a partner can ask follow up questions that a lower level employee might not think of. Also, try to find a way to reach a sampling of people who didn’t purchase the product, say those who called for a consult and didn’t convert, because they offer good insights as well.

It’s not expensive market research, but it works.

Want to know what makes your customer tick? Just ask.

Howard Henson & Associates, Inc.

Marketing - Grapic Design - Web Design - Printing - Laminating

Larry Henson, President In Business Since 1974 405-471-4888

Cap What?

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

 

Believe it or not, some in this country think, oh wait, let me restate that, believe the planet will be saved by cap and trade. Okay, they don’t really believe that, they believe it is a first step in the right direction.

Forget details like, cap what, trade what?

 

Like duh man, cap carbon. And then if you don’t make too much carbon, you can trade your extra carbon coupons for money. It’s about saving the planet.

Of course, if you actually intend to do anything other than sit around and get high by candlelight, you might find energy pretty essential. People like farmers might need energy to grow food, publishers  need energy to produce books, schools need energy to turn on the lights, doctors need energy to save lives, and Hollywood stars need energy to fly around in jets. 

To clarify, the notion is to tax energy use on the presumption of carbon emissions as a greenhouse gas. And there is no trading, it’s a tax. The program starts with energy allotments that will be reduced over time, they will be inadequate to production, business will be required to purchase credits (more ration cards), and business will be encouraged (forced) to buy them from third world countries. 

Whatever your opinion on global warming, there’s no getting around the fact that cap and trade is a transfer tax from the productive to the non-productive.

In the end the cap will be on production of goods, services and our standard of living. The trade will be prosperity for poverty.

 

 

Larry Henson, President

Howard Henson & Associates, Inc.

800.223.6532             

405-471-4888