Do you have any vacant, or soon to be vacant, positions? Can you redistribute the work in your department to delay filling vacant positions, fill a vacant position at a lower pay grade, or honour staff member requests to reduce their hours each pay period? Are there non-mission critical tasks or projects that can be delayed to allow staff to focus on essential tasks during the work day?

Identify job functions that can be combined and areas where cross coverage or training can be provided to increase the depth of skills in your staff. Voluntary retirements are down and you have an opportunity to leverage the experience of your long term employees to fill critical staffing needs and, as time permits, to mentor newer, less experienced employees.

Take a look at the costs of your HR programmes. Are you primarily using expensive print advertising? Can you move your ads online, run them less frequently or minimise the copy? Can you negotiate lower rates with your Employee Assistance Program provider? Is it more cost effective to bring an outsourced function back in-house?

Managers and supervisors are being asked to do more with less and are looking to you for options. Be the change you want to see in others.

Be a Trusted Business Partner
You are a valued, and necessary, part of the organisation and offer an important perspective. Take a look around and you will see organisations responding to the financial crisis in a number of ways. You will see responses ranging from hiring freezes, layoffs, or reductions in force to salary freezes, reduced work weeks, reduced work days and mandatory shutdowns. You will see organizations raising employee contributions towards health care premiums, increasing travel restrictions, reducing the 401(k) match, or reducing training.

You know how your business makes money or is funded. You’ve reviewed the financials, dug into the numbers, and now you have some questions. Ask them. Do whatever it takes to determine exactly what challenges your organisational leaders are facing and work alongside them to develop the set of responses right for your organization. Think proposals through and identify the benefits and risks of each.

Is your organisation utilising student career experience programmes, internships or residents? These programmes are a cost to the organisation in terms of money and time; however, they can be an important component of workforce development and succession planning. Depending on your programme design, the incumbents of these positions may perform lower graded or routine administrative duties permitting staff to focus on mission critical tasks. How would cutting, or continuing, these programmes aid, or hinder, your organisation?

Rethink your incentive, bonus, and performance management plans. What changes can you make to your plans to align them with the changing business priorities? Are you incentivising the desired behaviours? Are you rewarding the desired outcomes?

Tough decisions must be made and your organisation is looking to you for direction. Trust is earned, so do your homework.

Be a Compelling Voice
It is easy to get caught up in the doom and gloom, but don’t. There are great things happening in your organisation every day. The nurse who stays late to personally meet with a patient’s family, a clerk who develops a better method to track resolutions to customer issues, or the supervisors who make a point to check in on each of their staff members each day are contributing in the ways that they can.

Focus on what is working. Help others to see the good for perspective on the bad and keep this in front of organisational leaders. Involve employees in decision making, communicate the state of the business regularly, and keep performance expectations high.

Preserve core values. What are your organisation’s core values? Watching costs is at the top of most agendas, however, encourage leaders to cut costs with an eye towards honouring core values. Employees are drawn to you because of your core values. Sacrifice your core values and you risk employee engagement.

Keep the long term vision in mind. Short term business survival is necessary but it is not compelling. What is compelling? A vision of the organisation coming out of the economic crisis strong, well positioned and engaged is very compelling. Keep this vision in front of leaders, managers, supervisors, and employees as they make strategic, tactical and on-the-spot decisions. Challenge ideas that jeopardise the vision and hold your colleagues accountable for doing the same.

Business angst can negatively impact long-term decision making and your organisation is looking for your perspective. Be the voice of reason.

A Call to Action
Your organisation is in distress. You have the opportunity to utilize your knowledge, expertise and unique people-focused business understanding to enable your organisation to face these challenges head on.

HR leaders, this is your time to lead.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Lisa Rosendahl, SPHR, is a Human Resource (HR) leader with over 15 years of professional HR experience. With 10 years of military service as an officer in the United States Army and progressive HR leadership roles in public, private and government organisations, she brings a unique perspective to leadership, personal growth and the business of human resources. Lisa is recognised as a Senior Professional in Human Resources (SPHR) from the Society of Human Resource Management. Her bachelor's degree (Biology) is from Gannon University and she hold masters degrees from Webster University (Management) and the University of Pennsylvania (Organizational Dynamics).

Lisa is the voice behind Lisa Rosendahl’s HR Thoughts.