Economic Recession-Role of HR

I am happy to be back with some contribution to the Hr Group since I was not actively contributing to any of the HR groups for the last couple of months except moderating the HR Innovators Group, which I own and moderate for the past 5 years.

The world economy is feeling the heat of economic recession. In most of the cases it is due to the inaction or wait and watch policy adopted by corporates since the future is uncertain. It would be prudent to examine if there is a recession or only an assumed threat to the economy. The share market prices have crashed across the Globe and many people had lost money, again it is not the real money but perceived value of the shares. It is better to put is differently since, the jacked up share prices corrected itself by coming closer to the real value of the share. The people who lost money have created a panic in the market since in most cases people don't go into the in-depth analysis and the real details of the Financial health of the companies in which they are investing.

Let us come back to the role of HR now. In most cases HR is forced to do some kind of knee-jerk reactions like cutting the Tea coffee, sending out the lowest paid workers under the garb of reduction of head count, Stopping all training programmes and cutting the lunch during the training programmes etc. Is this action will help you in any way? I feel no since we are also falling into the trap of number games. What we should really do in these circumstances. I suggest the following steps which we may debate.
1. Examine the Managerial and Executive roles carefully and try to club roles, which may help in reducing the headcount with substantial savings.
2. Increase the volume of Training activities, which will help the employees understand the importance to increase their productivity rather than falling into a negative mindset, which will in turn affect the total productivity of the organisation.
3. Examine the traveling expenses and ask the executives to travel in the lowest possible class
4. Form CFTs to work on wastage reduction
5. Form CFTs to work on the process improvement
6. Help the finance / sourcing department to negotiate for more credit
7. Help the production/ Delivery team to work on reduction of cycle time.
Please feel be free to discuss this point.
Regards,
Roy.J.George
mailto:roy.george@seforge.
919442222006