Talent Management - December 2008 - (Page 14)

[foundations] by Kate DCamp W W • Job security and concern about the company’s future. • The potential loss of a home by the employee or extended family member. • Employee may be called upon to help support relatives. • Effect on raises and bonuses. Mitigate Employee Stress During Financial Crisis ith the failure of a number of major ﬁnancial institutions and large declines in the stock market, employees have a lot of concerns that may affect them on the job. Concern about the company’s ﬁnancial stability will be on everyone’s mind, and productivity may decline as stress levels increase. Talent managers can expect an increase in employee assistance program activity, and stress-related illness may affect attendance and health plan usage. As employers, now is the time to think about how to best support your employees in this economic climate. Some issues to consider are: sible. It is also important to remind employees that in a public company, there are things that cannot be communicated until the information is ready to be communicated publicly. If your business had major customers that have merged or failed, employees will be concerned about how much business they represent. If the company has a banking or insurance relationship with an affected ﬁrm, employees will be concerned about how the failure of those ﬁrms may affect the company. If the effect on the business is unknown, tell employees you will update them when you have inforbers who may be directly affected, and that stress from any family situation is what the employee assistance program is intended to help employees deal with. Some employees will be worried that the ﬁrm handling their 401(k) accounts may be at risk. Having the 401(k) vendor come in or produce communications explaining the separate nature of 401(k) accounts also would help reassure employees. In addition, some employees may feel they should shift their investments out of stock into lower-risk investment vehicles. Of course you must be very careful to avoid offering any investment advice. It might be helpful to have the 401(k) representatives remind Now is the time to think about how to best support your employees in this economic climate. About the Author Kate DCamp is the senior executive adviser at Cisco. She can be reached at editor@talentmgt.com. • Drop in employee’s 401(k) account value. • Decline in company stock value could affect employee personal holdings, stock purchase plan, stock options or restricted stock. • Risk of loss of deferred compensation or supplemental nonqualiﬁed pensions. • Employees may be less likely to leave, unless they get insecure about company prospects. Company Issues The most important step talent managers can take right now is to open up a dialogue with employees about their concerns. While you obviously cannot predict the future, it is important to tell employees how the company is doing to the extent pos- mation. If the company is doing some belt tightening, get the information on any actions out to employees as soon as possible. Unless the company is at risk of survival, reassure employees the failure of a few ﬁrms that had ﬁnancial issues unique to their businesses does not directly affect the viability of your ﬁrm. Employee Personal Issues Now also is the time to remind employees about the employee assistance program, or if you don’t have a program, consider adding one. It may be worthwhile to bring counselors from the program in for sessions to help employees understand the resources available and to make it clear that it is OK to use the program for stress, without having a speciﬁc mental health issue. Acknowledge that the company knows employees have family mem- employees about the long-term nature of a retirement investment account and the potential effect of locking in short-term losses. If your company’s stock has taken a beating, remind employees that any stock-based compensation is intended to deliver value over the long term. Acknowledge that shorter-term changes in value can be disturbing, but you also may want to show the stock price over a longer period of time historically, to illustrate the temporary effect of more dramatic market movements. Remember that your approach to communications will go a long way to establish an environment of candor and trust, which are essential to sustain your business through these tough times. 14 December 2008 talent management magazine www.talentmgt.com http://www.talentmgt.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Talent Management - December 2008

Talent Management - December 2008 Editor's Letter Contents Human Performance Leading Edge Foundations Recruitment & Retention Assessment & Evaluation Compensation & Benefits Performance Management Learning & Development Succession Planning Insight Dashboard Application Advertiser's Index Editorial Resources Full Potential

Talent Management - December 2008

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.