HRESULTS RESEARCH:

Cause and Effect: The Impact of Decisions Made

Our study focuses on the consequences, both positive and negative, of specific actions taken by organizations as the recent downturn deepened. As "recovery" plans are being developed, we are finding that (workforce impacting) options available to an individual organization are highly dependent on decisions they previously made and the way the actions were implemented. Despite the slow recovery, employees may be less forgiving of what they perceive as "insensitivity" on the part of their employer than they have been in the past.

In speaking with our clients as they ponder the changing economic environment and reflect on actions they took (impacting their workforce) to weather the downturn, we have been hearing stories of opportunity and obstacles. Hindsight, it appears, creates perspective and helps answer the question "What could we have done differently?".

However, we have been finding that this is not the right question to be asking.

Actions implemented can't be taken back. The question is "What are we able to do now?".

Our theory is that the workforce management approaches taken by individual enterprises were so disparate that recovery planning will require organizations to provide frontline leadership with a "chinese menu" of available tools as opposed to a standardized roadmap. Generational differences, which are today's workforce reality, have made cookie cutter solutions obsolete.

Our study, initiated in March 2010, focuses on the "recovery plans" being debated by business leaders and human resources executives. Using a structured interview guide developed by the HResults Academy, we are gathering data on how these executives perceive their alternatives and the extent to which these are enabled or limited by the specific tactics they employed to manage workforce expenditures.

We will periodically report on our findings and ultimately plan to develop a "recovery handbook" that will synthesize the thinking of study participants with our cause and effect analysis.

 

Important Note: In order to maintain confidentiality, individual organizations will not be identified when reporting our feedback. Data will be presented by demographic factors including organization size, industry group and geography.

 

For more information or to participate in this or future studies, contact us