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Don’t Scare ‘Em, But Tell the Truth-Managers need to focus on how they communicate to keep their staff motivated after layoffs.

This week’s unemployment figures — up 18,000 to 381,000 new claims — didn’t climb as high as Wall Street guessed they would, but the numbers do emphasize that the nascent recovery remains, for the most part, a jobless one. Even those lucky enough to be employed are feeling the stress in additional work and general nervousness.

By Jimmy Guterman Business 2.0

Managers are likely to be supervising teams that are smaller than they once were: The Labor Department reports that 1.7 million Americans have lost their jobs since the recession began in 2001. That means these managers have had the challenge of overseeing and motivating people who have seen comrades sent home with pink slips and who fear that they may be next.

During the past three weeks, I’ve talked to managers at 19 businesses, most of them in technology or media, that have laid off employees during the past two years. I wanted to learn what methods worked best when it came to keeping a staff focused and inspired post-layoff. A consensus emerged. So, from the trenches, here are what some savvy bosses are doing to maintain morale.

Don’t make promises you can’t keep. After a layoff, many employees turn to their managers for reassurance. Any manager who cares about the people on his or her staff wants them to feel safe. But in this environment, it’s unwise and often dishonest to tell staffers that the job-cutting ax has been put away. Many companies have had to endure multiple rounds of layoffs before either turning the business around or succumbing to bankruptcy. Managers don’t want nervous employees, but nothing will spook remaining staff members more than seeing a second round of people forced to leave after being promised that the first round would be the only one.

Do set realistic expectations — but acknowledge that you don’t consult a crystal ball. That means setting realistic performance expectations for the company as a whole as well as for individuals. Companies with stock prices of $200 circa 2000, which now trade at 2 bucks, aren’t going to be back up anywhere near $200 anytime soon, if ever. Plans for world domination have been replaced by hopes of survival. Managers who focus on the important role staffers play in the success of any company, managers who commend high-quality work as well as progress toward a financial goal, can better soothe the psyches of employees — without setting unrealistic expectations about how their efforts will bring back the bubble.

Don’t scare employees. They’re scared already. Now is not the time to take management lessons from Glengarry Glen Ross. Bullying and threatening staffers to meet goals is rarely a good idea. Doing so in a post-layoff environment merely showcases the manager’s fears, which subordinates will begin to share as they become increasingly unmotivated.

Do make necessary cuts of personnel and expenses — no matter how unpleasant — quickly and decisively. Knowing weeks in advance that a layoff is coming — as many managers were dismayed to learn — sends morale plunging along with the quality and quantity of work. It’s bad enough when people learn on Monday that there will be cuts that week, but extended uncertainty is a sure path to profound disaffection.

Don’t blame your staffers — to their faces or behind their backs. I heard one manager say, "We wouldn’t be in this mess if the people here had delivered in the first place." That may be true (at least in part), and employees should certainly have the opportunity to learn from past mistakes. But this manager’s employees were not responsible for the broader recession that still grips even well-run, highly productive firms.

Do think long-term and communicate that. The economic climate may never again in our lifetimes look as clear as it did in 1999 or 2000, but it surely will not be this gloomy forever. In particular, younger employees, who began working during the boom years, need to be taught or reminded that there is such a thing as a business cycle, in which neither the top nor the bottom lasts forever. Everything passes.

http://www.business2.com/articles/web/0,1653,46734,00.html

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