Keep Key Skills

It is important that it retains trained and qualified personnel to remain competitive. The key is to reorganize workloads and improve the skills of current personnel. In other words, it is important to use the HR budget to retain key skills within the company. Companies that make drastic layoffs to cut costs could suffer in the long term by losing skilled employees. Thus, by informing the staff of the difficult times the company will face, they will be able to understand the decisions made and the underlying reasons. They will also be able to identify what the changes mean for them. As a result, they will be able to explain the changes to clients or partners with informed knowledge and thereby share their ideas and suggestions for managing during difficult times. Innovative HR practices, whether it involves having some employees work part-time or adding hourly-paid employees, can help the company retain essential skills.

To be honest, when times are tough, the only objective of any director (company or HR) is to ensure that their managers, salespeople, and resources are efficient and effective. It is at this delicate moment that it is necessary to empower them to find new solutions, to adapt, to excel, to do better, or at the very least, very well. However, these people are sensitive to the context, are just as disturbed as the market, and therefore less available. Their energy is probably not being used to its full potential, their attention may be diffuse, their balance disturbed. These are all symptoms that reinforce the crisis. It is important to create a relationship of trust and listening. Indeed, by building trust, providing a neutral space free of tension, creating a space for dialogue and stimulation, we provide the opportunity to find the necessary solutions and implement a concrete action plan to address current difficulties.

"HR must be involved in the development of strategic plans"
Expert Opinion - Hassan Matai

How can HR help achieve good turnover during a crisis?

First, an HR manager must be able to request financial performance and other information relating to the company. They are also called upon to comment on the decline of certain financial indicators while linking them to the human resources aspect. They must therefore know that they are a stakeholder in achieving the already planned good turnover. This encourages them to anticipate their contribution by seeking information without saying that they are normally supposed to be involved in the development of the company's strategic plans. In the current global economic turbulence, HR must absolutely rejuvenate its know-how in order to make it much more attractive to the Management Staff.

Thus, HR must:

- improve the moral dysfunction of the sales force;
- detect and improve the skills of the sales force;
- be present at meetings to launch objectives to be achieved;
- be present in the field to motivate and accelerate the pace of performance, always within the limits of their HR plan.

How can they maintain good HR management, knowing that bosses are tightening their belts at the moment?

Certainly, today bosses are tightening their belts instead of giving HR more opportunities to accelerate the decision-making process, because we are currently experiencing a crisis that is much more imaginary than real, a crisis of caution with more fear than harm, without denying that some sectors have been experiencing a real crisis for more than five years (textiles). Finally, to be very objective on this point and before making my proposal in this context, I will cite a common example, currently in our financial organizations and in particular the banking sector, where overnight a former good client of a bank may feel disoriented following a restructuring plan without any precautions. Now, I propose that HR, in the first instance, strengthen the restructured cells or departments with facilitators (HR) who can effectively support change at all levels while avoiding many negative points for the company; ex: avoid a former client being misinformed or poorly served by a new recruit.

Which levers to use to retain the right people?

The essence of any action in this direction is not to deviate from your missions and values, this leads us to think well about how to retain good people in the company, which is prior to the search for honest people and not always the best, because with the sharing of trust we can establish a system of progressive discipline that facilitates performance management. Having the power to retain loyal people also requires a career plan for each person conveyed by costs in figures and moral values.

How to achieve good recruitment?

The world is changing with its management lifestyles too, so I think it's time that recruitment should be managed by specialty. It is necessary to call upon a specialized recruitment agent or recruitment agencies that use the help of practitioners in each field for the simple reason that the current hour often requires the hiring of an honest, quick and efficient problem-solver who can provide immediate solutions.

How to review the HR strategy in order to satisfy both the employer and the employee?

A company that questions its future skills will be better able to cope with all future difficulties. Therefore, it is necessary to implement true human resource management focused on skills and performance. Therefore, today, redefining HR strategy means being able to establish a concept based on transparent and cohesive collaboration while providing HR with the means and opportunities to integrate into the company's economic and financial process.

Nadia Dref
Published May 31, 2009

Posted online June 5, 2009

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