Rising inflation, higher interest rates, and job cuts across various industries — we’ve all heard the grim news pointing to a potential recession. While recessions can make life difficult on a personal and business level, navigating your organization through economic turmoil and emerging virtually unscathed is possible. 

While you’ll want to engage in the usual tactics of managing your revenues, cutting expenses, and keeping a close eye on your cash flow, you should also ensure you don’t lose any highly skilled workers to your competitors. 

To keep your employees happy and engaged at your company, we recommend abiding by these three tips.

1.  Be Transparent About the Economic Climate

No matter what industry your company is in, you’re likely feeling the pinch of the adverse economic climate and wondering how long it will last. You might be engaging in traditional cost-cutting measures, like slashing your marketing budget and cutting down on employee travel.

Other methods of keeping strict control of your budget include regular meetings with your finance and accounting team to determine where you can cut costs, ensuring that your clients are paying you promptly, and meeting company debt payments and payroll.

You may be pondering some more significant cuts to expenses, like laying off a percentage of your workforce. 

Whatever your concerns are for your company, you want to preserve it the best way you know how. One way to ensure that your workers don’t jump ship when you begin your efforts at cutting costs is complete transparency. Employees don’t want to be kept in the dark.

You should explain to your employees your current financial concerns for the company whenever appropriate. That doesn’t mean you need to preach doom and gloom to whoever will listen; instead, let your employees know the specifics of what your company is going through, whether it’s a revenue decline or an upcoming loss to your net income. 

Chances are your employees will step in with their ideas to assist your business; after all, they won’t want to see their jobs on the line any more than you would.

2.  Keep Training and Development Top of Mind

Many organizations make the mistake of cutting their training and development programs, especially when they’re low on cash. However, this is a mistake few companies can afford to make. If you need to cut some more extensive programs, like tuition reimbursement, find another way to allow your employees to grow their skills.

You can enable employees to cross-train with other workers, allowing them to learn more about their department and what it takes to run it. 

Cross-training also helps organizations avoid losing critical knowledge if a key employee decides to leave for a new opportunity. Employees who learn other workers’ responsibilities can step up and take them over until you have another solution for replacing the original worker.

You can also look at low-cost ways to further the development of your team members. For instance, you could encourage them to participate in local networking clubs, like Toastmasters, or provide a free subscription to online classes through Coursera. 

3. Be Open About Moving Workers to Other Departments

One of the most commonly cited reasons for leaving a position is boredom. Once an employee masters the skill set needed for their role, their interest tends to dwindle unless they receive new responsibilities to learn.

If boredom among your employees is a concern, consider opening up roles in other departments to your highest performers. The opportunity to learn something entirely different from what they’re used to is often too good to pass up. 

By allowing your employees to expand their skill set, you keep them from moving on to another business, ensuring that critical company-specific knowledge stays where you want it to — with your organization. 

Moving workers across different departments provides another strategic advantage. Rather than opening up the floodgates to new hires, you’ll give the ones you already have the potential to learn new things while avoiding the expense of hiring new team members whose performance isn’t guaranteed.

Get Help with Your Organization’s Retention Strategy

If you’re a business owner concerned about retaining your workers in today’s economic climate, AssetHR can help. Reach out to us today to learn how we can help you maximize your current workers’ performance without losing them to the competition.