The following output represents thoughts of the 62 partcipants attending the program.  Some of the concepts volunteered are, by their nature, overlapping.  Howerer, many pure ‘nuggets’ are worth your perusal and potential adoption.  Thanks to Right Management Consultants and Alicia Whitaker for organizing this very productive event.

What can organizations do to re-engage and re-energize the workforce as companies emerge from the recession?

§  “Up Isn’t the Only Way”

§  “Weight watchers  at Work” program

§  “Why Pride Matters More Than Money”

§  Allow for meetings where we get Senior Leadership to interact with lower level employees

§  Also rebuild from the bottom up – engage employees, involve them in decisions, be transparent

§  Ask employees “if you were CEO what would you do in next 3 years”

§  Be clear with employees about what leaders can and can’t communicate

§  Be willing to admit mistakes

§  Begin focusing on helping employees get better at the job they are currently in rather than looking for their next promotion.

§  Blogs have been a great way to have two communications directly with senior leadership

—    Breakfast forums

§  Bringing training to very low level employees as they are often an overlooked population.

§  Build a development culture that helps reduce dependency on salary rewards.

—    Build relationships between line managers and employees

§  Celebrate what we have done

§  Coaching and Development of Line Managers

§  Coaching and mentoring programs are relatively inexpensive and highly effective to build employee loyalty.

§  Communication skills, especially with leaders and managers, are paramount now. “People join companies and leave bosses.”

§  Conduct a cultural assessment of where you are now and where you want to be

§  Consider work life balance options

—    Corporate social responsibility programs

§  Create “small communities” within the larger organization…

§  Create a fellowship program to allow someone to experience another type of job on a temporary basis

§  Create a sense of belonging/inclusion

§  Create vehicles for people to talk about reactions/concerns and that provide opportunities for managers to listen

§  Creation of clubs and groups

—    Creation of technology mentors that allow for junior employees to teach the senior members on new technology

§  Cross generational training practices; leverage the talent of the new generation

§  Customized messages and channels to motivate…

§  Decide to stop hiring external candidates; to fill new positions, everyone must find a good internal resource or choose to keep the position empty

§  Define engagement so that we can define behaviors that we need to see by Leaders and Employees.

§  Discover what the key talent is passionate about and promote opportunities that exist for them

§  Discuss the possibility of rolling out new competencies that reflect the new business strategy and current economic realities

§  Don’t just communicate – create a dialogue

§  Don’t lie

§  Don’t stop employee development – the result will be catastrophic.

§  Drive clarity and flexibility in messages and delivery. People are “freezing” without information.

§  Each person needs to understand what their role is and what is in it for him and her

§  Employees that are more in virtual teams need to have the technology to support them.  Live video chats are a great way to keep them up to date and involved

§  Encourage managers to strengthen the bond with their employees

§  Engage in teambuilding to shore up team performance

§  Ensure that all know that the company has a future-what its’ strategy is and how employees can best contribute to execution of strategy

§  Ensure that there is accountability

§  Examine work/life balance….

§  Feedback is free!

§  Find unique ways to recognize people and contribution especially when they step out of the norm by displaying innovative and creative thinking and behaviors.

§  Focus more on providing employees with opportunities for development

§  Focus on crisis, and be open on discussing the topic of the current situation

§  Focus on development of high potentials

§  Focus on the customer

§  Focus on the local work group level and have a discussion around expectations

§  Focusing on the mission of organization and communicate throughout, especially when circumstances such as compensation are not a factor (i.e. non profit).

§  Generation Y’s want balance in their lives and have an expectation of a socially responsible company.

§  Get creative with compensation

§  Get to know employees so you know where else they might fit in the organization

§  Giving them the tools to say how have I experienced change before and how can I leverage this in the new situation

§  Group Learning activity to solve the problem

§  Have breakfast to which everyone is invited, and display energy and future vision on the part of leadership…

§  Have engagement statistics for the company and compare from prior to recession

§  Help your employees become more resilient

§  Honor employees for what they do at work and outside of work

§  How is the business doing, what is the prospect of the business and what do I need to do as an employee to contribute

§  Identify what your value proposition is 

§  If you use a survey, it needs to be targeted and relevant to the challenges that are going on now in the organization

§  In some organizations there is something called the huddle, where they spend 5-10 minutes at the beginning of the day and get people calibrated and up to date

§  Incorporate teamwork and communication with the staff openly and regularly.  Being consistent with the team and being fair

§  Increase employee visibility by involving them in projects and task forces

—    Influential leaders involved with community events alongside with employees

§  Involve employees more fully in the execution of the strategy-make them a larger part of the entire change

§  Involve high potentials on highly visible and challenging projects.

§  Its not enough to measure, you need to take action based on the feedback and this support needs to be at the top

—    J&J – Younger generation are asked to come up with ideas that would help the company

—    Line managers need to learn to recognize and support change

§  Look at rebuilding trust from the top down – leaders should address the past, and define the future

§  Look at their interests outside the workplace to re-engage.

§  Looking at the job itself and how we can use that to intrinsically motivate…

§  Looking at what changes there are in the business and talent./competencies needed

§  Make it possible for employees to take jobs in other parts of the organization to keep them engaged and utilized

§  Managers and senior leaders need start listening to their employees

—    Managers can work on regaining employee trust by being visible and available

—    Mentorships that have employees teaching finance, computer, and other skills to school kids

§  Message cascading processes become even more critical when you have a virtual workforce and there was accountability on the managers to facilitate this within their teams

§  Middle managers have a key role to play

§  Middle managers need to be held accountable for facilitating engagement within their teams

§  More Transparency, employees don’t want to be kept in the dark

§  Name change and other re-branding efforts  can reinvigorate employees

—    Networking events

—    Not necessarily a monetary award

§  Now is the time, more than ever, to do an employee survey

§  Offer ways to help employees be more agile and adapt…

§  One way to challenge your leadership teams to recognize the importance of retention of high potentials is to ask, “What product is going to walk out the door when people walk out the door?

§  Overall, you need to treat everyone as adults

§  People don’t want to be one person with one career– blow up titles and classic career paths. They want multiple levels and multiple opportunities, no more career “ladder” it’s a career “web”.

§  People need to be engaged in what they can control, its helping them find those things that they can control

§  Put together a strategy on what we plan on doing and the benefits of the recession…using HR/Line together…

§  Quick targeted pulse surveys are very effective to get a sense of what is going on

§  Reach out to clients to have:

—    Re-assess the employee value connection

§  Recognition needs to be apparent

§  Recognize outstanding behavior and share their stories with other employees.

§  Remember to talk about what is going well! Doing so is energizing.

§  Remind employees of the benefits they have and encourage them to take advantage of them

§  Remind employees of why they came and why they should stay – reiterate the employee value proposition.

§  Reward reflection time- use entrepreneurial thinking circles…

—    Second life (IBM)

—    Senior leader messages need to be in line with company goal

—    Senior leaders need training in delivering key messages

—    Senior management attention can be rewarding if people feel that they are listening

§  Set expectations and hold people accountable

—    Sharing of ideas, think tank

§  Some leaders don’t have the skills to be able to be vulnerable and transparent; this can be very uncomfortable for a hierarchical company

—    Talk about strategies of the growing the businesses during the current economic conditions

§  Tell employees what’s in it for them, beyond having a job and a paycheck

§  The communication needs to be both ways in terms of determining what is the direction of the future

—    The discussion of real issues so and involve Senior Managers

§  The ideas for the organization need to be clearly communicated throughout the organization

§  The managers need to be able to have two way discussions

§  There needs to be an open environment where people feel safe to raise opinions and raise questions

§  There should be Mid Year career discussions along with year end discussions about performance.  Use the opportunity to focus on how people can grow

§  Those who are weathering the storm have strong performance management processes and communication processes.

§  Trust has to be rebuilt

§  Understand individual employee needs; know what engages them and what managers can specifically do to tap into these needs

§  Use actors to start a conversation about issues within an organization

§  Use more career assessment and career guidance…how can I expand…

§  Use more recognition – thank you is free

§  Use the crisis to examine what we can do to change the way we operate and fully involve employees in that 

§  Use your own resources for training and development

§  Utilize “high tech” communications such as chats, webcasts, live Q&A with leaders.

§  Utilize “high touch” communications such as person-to-person meetings, career development discussions, and have senior leaders visible and active in communications such as town halls.

§  Utilize more employee-centric models

§  Utilize social media to share information and-make the organization more transparent

§  Virtual workers present a new challenge in that the technology is there for communication but you need to have a compelling message to support that

§  Walk the talk

§  You need to give middle managers the tools to facilitate engagement within their teams