Communicate to engage during a recession

Engaging your employees and stakeholders in the goals and aims of your business is a key activity that organisations who want to be successful must get right. Moreover, as economic pressure intensifies, this need is even more business critical and the stakes to get engagement right are arguably even higher.

A tough business and economic environment has the potential to create a silo mentality within organisations, where a blame culture can develop between teams as the pressure to perform intensifies. When this situation is combined with increasing employee concerns about their job safety, a working environment that is really not conducive to high or sustainable levels of employee engagement can develop.

Now, more than ever, employers need to maintain their focus on engagement. In Accor Services' study of over 1600 organisations and employees last year, factors such as leadership, management and communication were rated as the main drivers of employee engagement – and now in 2009, the role of managers and the application of communications to drive engagement have become increasingly important.  

This is particularly true when it comes to rewards and benefits and it is clear from Accor Services’ research that employers are not maximising the impact of the employee rewards and benefits they offer. Only one in three employers surveyed (33%) believe staff understand what benefits are on offer and, when it comes to employees, only one in five (21%) claim to have a good understanding of the value of the benefits available to them.

To redress this balance, employers need to invest in open, two-way communications they recognise as both a driver and an enabler of engagement. Engaged employees feel involved in their organisation, believe they do and can contribute, and want to be able to communicate their ideas and suggestions and raise any questions or concerns.

In the climate of a recession – particularly when benefits budgets are likely to be under pressure – you need to evolve your reward and benefits’ strategy to fit the new context. If your focus now needs to be on cost saving and efficiencies, you can encourage and reward employees and teams who can deliver the savings – and this can be done with rewards and benefits that will make a huge difference to your employees’ lives.

Be creative and invest in simple solutions that make your employees’ lives a little easier. Providing employees with the opportunity to save money on their weekly shop is a great way to show you care and acknowledge the current economic pressures, for example, but alongside offering this benefit you also need to be sure that the message gets through.

Engaging your employees in times of recession is really all about developing new ways of working and establishing new relationships between your business and your people. But to be effective, you do need to treat employees as individuals and reward them accordingly.

This doesn’t mean offering massive pay hikes – few organisations could afford this at the moment! But it does mean understanding what drives people to work for you and communicating the fact that you understand, recognise and appreciate each employee’s effort and commitment.