If you’re reading this, you don’t have to be told how crazy things are now. Costs of goods are rising, and most people feel the effects of this economic downturn.
We’re not quite in a recession, though most analysts predict it could happen in 2023.
At American Management Services, we consult owners on how to customize a plan to protect the integrity of their business through any crisis.
Our economy has been trying to exit the covid-19 pandemic. Now, all business owners are faced with inflation, rising fuel and food costs, interest rate increases, labor issues, and supply chain challenges.
We’ve worked with owners guiding them through every economic downturn, decline, and recession for nearly forty years. This survival plan is based on our experiences and guidance to those owners.
With our proven track record, we are confident that following this guide will work for you too.
Your Objectives
In this two-part series, we’re going to walk through the three key areas essential to your business. We’re also going to give you strategies which you can implement starting today.
You need to focus on protecting:
- Your people
- The integrity of your operations
- Your liquidity
In this article, we’re going to focus on protecting your people.
These three areas have to be worked on together, and each is dependent upon the success of the others, in order to work. We call them “closed-loop.”
Protecting Your People
Develop your own leadership regimen:
Maintain your sanity
Be real with your current situation, then design, develop, and implement practical and achievable plans to overcome your challenges. You must be a functional and consistent leader by practice, not just on paper.
Manpower planning
Develop Manpower Look-Ahead plans to ensure that you have the appropriate amount of labor available to operate efficiently for the labor dollars spent.
Fancy name, but this is a schedule you create–usually two weeks ahead–where you can see activities and goals for specific projects.
Communication planning
This is self-explanatory but most owners neglect to communicate their plans to their employees.
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Once you develop a plan (if you need help, refer to this article), communicate with your staff, particularly if you have people working from home.
Working from home
Utilize technology and performance metrics to ensure that your stay-at-home staff are maximizing their productivity. I recommend you implement daily and weekly reporting requirements to hold your staff accountable to the goals you’ve set.
Recruitment, Training, & Retention
With inflation winds blowing, one company’s misfortune is another’s opportunity. You may have a golden opportunity to find and recruit new talent.
You also have an extraordinary opportunity to train and develop new and existing employees to fill roles and positions within your organization. We urge you to take advantage of this time!
Integrate recruiting, training, and retention into your daily routine.
Develop Incentive-Based Compensation
We believe in pay-for-performance, even in the best of times, and we certainly believe the same in the current economic environment.
Productivity is vital for survival relative to your labor spend: Develop an incentive-based compensation plan to ensure maximum productivity. We speak about this more in depth here.
Your staff will be highly motivated to generate results, no matter how impacted revenues may be.
You don’t want to be left in the ditch. Stay tuned next week to learn how to protect your business’s integrity and liquidity. Click the ‘Follow’ button here on Forbes to ensure you don’t miss out on our follow-up.
