How do managers boost the performance of employees when business is down? That question is the focus of a new book by Sylvia Ann Hewlett. Top Talent explores the wide range of tools and techniques available to employers struggling with both how to motivate and keep the loyalty of workers and managers
In good times, companies say that people are the most important asset. In bad times, they get rid of them. Is that a paradox — or hypocrisy?
At the heart of the problem is that a lot of the top performers out there feel totally ignored and out of the loop. Their bosses are perhaps focusing on the clamouring clients in this recession or on the vaporizing bottom line. And these top performers feel that they’re being taken for granted. Many bosses seem to think that — with a 10-plus per cent rate of unemployment — they can rely on their best people putting their nose to the grindstone and delivering 110 per cent day in day out. But that’s not true: there’s a lot of alienation, a lot of disengagement. My sense is that 50 per cent of the workforce is spending more than half of their time looking for their next job. I think the flight risk, as well as the productivity losses, that happens because bosses are out of touch with how their workers think and feel (even their best workers!) is enormous.