Keeping Your Talent on Track Even in Tough Times

We’re living through what is, for most of us, the worst economic recession in memory. In that kind of environment, spending time and effort on employee career development might seems like a back-burner priority. But helping your workers—especially your best ones—on track for their career goals can ultimately pay off for all involved. This article explores why and how to help your staffers keep moving forward in their careers despite the downturn.

We’re living through what is, for most of us, the worst economic recession in memory. In this kind of environment, spending time and effort on employee career development might seem like a back-burner priority. But helping your workers—especially your best ones—stay on track for their career goals can ultimately pay off for all involved. This white paper explores why and how to help keep your employees moving forward in their careers despite the downturn.

By Anne Stuart

If nurturing your employees’ individual careers isn’t exactly at the top of your management to-do list right now, that’s certainly understandable.

After all, we’re mired in what many experts say is the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression. Like many managers, you’re probably juggling more responsibilities with fewer resources than ever before. You may well be focused on doing only what’s necessary to ensure that your company makes it through the downturn.

But even in this extraordinary era, it’s important to make sure that your employees—in particular, your key managers, your star performers and your most promising newcomers—feel that they’re moving toward their own career goals as well as the company’s. That’s because such efforts are likely to pay off in terms of productivity, loyalty and the kind of motivation and innovation that can help ensure that your business not only survives the recession, but thrives in spite of it.

At the very least, your sincere interest in individual employees’ career growth can serve as a highly visible message of hope for brighter days ahead.

Following are four tried-and-true ways to help your employees continue to grow their careers even in this challenging economic climate. The good news: None of these approaches involve investing a lot of time or money.

Encourage self-evaluation. Today, more than ever, personal success in many fields depends on having a unique “value proposition.” Career-minded employees should know, and be able to articulate, not only their short- and long-term goals, but exactly what they have to offer. You might consider holding a lunchtime workshop or scheduling short one-to-one meetings with employees to help them identify their unique combinations of experience, skills, abilities and personal traits. If they wish, employees can then use that information to draft quick summaries, for their personal use only, about what sets them apart from the pack. Those statements—think of them as individual “elevator pitches”—can provide a valuable foundation for employees hoping to move up in your company. As a bonus, this exercise also often highlights shortcomings or skill-set gaps that employees can work on improving as well.

Promote industry awareness. In most professions, the top players follow important local, national and even global industry developments—and not just what’s happened recently, but what’s going on right now. Encouraging your employees to keep tabs on industry-specific news and trends will keep them updated on issues affecting both your company and their own careers. You might suggest specific publications, blogs, e-newsletters or Web sites that everyone should read or visit. Or, for productivity’s sake (and to prevent information overload), you might assign each staffer to follow a couple of key sources, alerting everyone else in your group when something important pops up.

Support continuous learning. In the Information Age, Sir Francis Bacon’s centuries-old observation that “knowledge is power” is more applicable than ever. However, it’s equally true that, when times are tough, training and education budgets are among the first to be decimated. So how can you balance the desire to encourage employees to keep learning new skills against limited or non-existent funding for helping them do so? Following are two possibilities:

1) Search the Web for training bargains. Many organizations offer self-directed online instruction at little or no cost. Microsoft, for example, offers free on-demand (and non-technical) Webcasts geared to people seeking more effective ways to use PowerPoint, Excel and other Microsoft business software. MediaBistron.com, a Web site for media, public relations and marketing professionals, offers dozens of low-cost online and in-person courses on topics ranging from preparing business proposals and presentations to writing advertising copy. Many professional associations offer free or low-cost skills training for members; some colleges provide free on-demand Webcasts of past live events—such as speeches and panel discussions—to share the information with people who were unable to attend in person.

2) Draw on your own resources. For instance, if you’d like everyone on your team to learn some basic financial terms and principles, you might enlist a company accountant to provide a one-time introductory seminar. If a couple of your company’s salespeople are renowned for their presentation skills, you might invite them to provide a short session on creating a great slide show.

Offer growth opportunities. Okay, so maybe you can’t promote your best people right now. But that doesn’t mean you can’t provide other paths for career advancement.

These days, authors, career counselors and others are encouraging employees who want to avoid layoffs to make themselves indispensable, or at least highly valuable. They’re being urged to exceed their job descriptions by volunteering for extra work and tough assignments, pitching in high-priority initiatives and suggesting viable ways for their companies to reduce costs or increase revenues.

Your role: inviting employees to take advantage of such opportunities. Those additional work, challenging assignments and mission-critical projects are probably already available. Why not offer them to employees who are hungry for the chance to prove their value? Meanwhile, you may be surprised at what your employees come up with if you simply provide them with no-risk ways to submit their cost-cutting and revenue-raising ideas.

Bottom line: The ongoing economic turmoil is certainly taking a toll on the entire business universe. But these simple practices can help you minimize or even eliminate the potential damage to your own employees’ careers—and provide benefits to your company at the same time.

ABOUT OUR EXPERT
Anne Stuart is a Boston-based freelance journalist who specializes in writing about business, career and workplace issues. She is a former staff editor or writer for Inc., CIO and Harvard magazines, The Associated Press and several daily newspapers. Her work has also appeared in CFO, Corporate Counsel, Deliver and many other magazines, newspapers, newsletters and Web sites.

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