With rapidly falling house prices, a significant credit squeeze and fast rising prices in the shops and at the gas stations, despite the fact that most Governments are in denial about the word, we seem to have entered a “recessionary” period, or at least in most of the western world. No-one knows how long this recession is likely to last or how deep it may go, but it is probably safe to assume that the next 12 months at least are likely to be much more difficult ones for most people.
For businesses of all sizes and types (no matter what sector they might be in) this usually causes a large-scale “tightening of the belt” as far as expenditure is concerned and one of the very first casualties of this tightening is training and development. In many ways, development at all levels (individual, team and enterprise-wide) has always been a “soft” target. It is soft because the direct impact of reducing or eliminated training altogether is not usually felt immediately (and often not even in a single year budget cycle). This affords operational managers the opportunity to make visible savings immediately or to use the money saved in other areas that appear to have quicker pay-offs.
Human resource and training professionals tend to be philosophical in recessionary or cut-back periods in the life of their organisation and reluctantly accept that their overall role is one of being a short-term overhead “burden” which can’t expect to “carry on as usual” when times are tough for the business as a whole. Ironically however, the so-called “people factors” are likely to be most crucial in recessionary times and may make the difference between “riding out the storm” poorly or well. Such people factors in recessionary times include the need for:
•ideas and guidance (especially in the leader population) about how to achieve team and organisational goals in times of resource constraints
• greater commercial “savvy” at all levels
•greater change and project management capability
• knowledge about how to better service customer needs or sell more efficiently and effectively
• methods and techniques to streamline internal processes
•proven and reliable ways in which to manage poor performance
• more collaborative teamwork and cooperation at all levels
• more creative problem solving and decision analysis
•Better ways to manage time, pressure and stress
This may not always read like a normal “menu” of training and development needs for individuals, teams and even the entire organisation but it can be the generic “blue-print” for the HR and training professionals to start thinking about how to make the kind of offerings or interventions that are really needed.
If we take the above list and convert it into a more familiar set of potential “offerings” from the training or organisational development group’s perspective, it is likely to look something like this:
• Coaching for success (or coaching skills in tough times)
• Develop commercial awareness for better business results
• Setting up and successfully managing change projects
• Building sales through greater customer service
• Reengineering operational processes to reduce costs and lift revenues
• Successfully managing poor performance
• Building strategic alliances, teamwork and collaboration
• Creative problem solving and decision analysis
• Successfully managing time, pressure and stress
Of course, even this list may have little appeal to operational managers unless what is offered is backed up substantively. In other words, a course, e-learning program, set of tools or internal consulting intervention must do “what it says on the box”. This means that existing programs may well have to be adjusted to ensure that content is entirely fit-for-purpose and, in many cases, that new content is sourced or developed as quickly as necessary. Hence, far from sitting back on its haunches and waiting to better times to roll around again, the HR, training and development team have the opportunity to take the proverbial “bull by the horns” and to be at the fore-front of how the business is going to tackle its major future issues. The only challenge now is how to practically do this.
If an organization has relatively well-staffed HR, training and OD function, it may have the opportunity to set up its own project team to look at the existing offerings to the organisation and start to make some changes. This will usually involve some input from line managers to discover where knowledge and experience shortfalls might lie to tackle the recessionary challenges being faced. It will also suggest particular areas where guidance and help to better tackle current problems and issues should be included in future training or development offerings (at the detailed content level). This “business needs analysis” is conducted in the same way as a “training needs analysis” but (as the term implies) the business requirement must come first and training may not be the only solution. Armed with this data, support and intervention design effort can commence (using internal or external resources as necessary and depending of the scale of the need and the deadlines that have been suggested).
If an organization has a relatively lean HR, training and/or OD function, external support may be needed much earlier and may even assist with the “business needs analysis”. Although this may have some up-front budgetary expenditure implications, there are many training and OD vendors who are prepared to work with organisations at relatively low cost and to only earn the more substantive fees to effect recovery of cost for them as programs and solutions are successfully deployed. Put another way, many external consultancies will “risk-share” with the client organisation in some negotiated way so that payments are only made when operational or line consumers are using the designed solution and seeing it to be valuable in real and tangible ways.
Summary
Recessionary times often cause the HR, Training and/or OD department to simply accept that their budgets and programs will be cut until there is greater financial flexibly within the enterprise. Because people are an even more critical asset during cut-back times (and we need to make even greater efforts to retain and motivate individuals as much as possible in these periods), the HR, Training and/or OD department can play a leading role in supporting the business in its time of greatest need. This effort to be at the fore-front depends upon a clear identification of the greatest business needs in the circumstances and the flexible design of support programs and interventions that are going to be truly valued. Both internal and external consulting skills are likely to be necessary to achieve the best results but these can be often rendered extremely cost effectively with an open and honest up-front agenda for what is needed and by when, as well as a negotiated joint stake in future results.
Jon Warner
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