Reaction to difficult financial times

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Permalink Reply by Robert Ward on October 9, 2008 at 9:07am

I am not aware of anything along those lines, but the point I would like to make is that an additional factor that should now be included is the loss to the business caused by knowledge leaving with (early) retirees. In May of this year when the oil price was high (good news for those of us in the oil business) I warned that although this risk was beginning to be managed, it seemed to me that we were ignoring the possibility of a sudden downturn, when typically older workers take early retirement never to return. As a commodity business this has been a fact of life for at least the thirty years that I have been involved in it.

The downturn has come very quickly and will be affecting businesses much wider than oil companies. Banking is an obvious one, made especially pertinent because I suspect Banks will be returning to the traditional model that has been out of fashion for twenty years. But the people who will be leaving will be just those folk who have some knowledge of that model.

Any thoughts?

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Permalink Reply by Theresa M. Welbourne, Ph.D. on November 16, 2008 at 9:13pm

I just came back from a meeting with a group of executives who were discussing asking employees for ideas - I thought this was a great idea, and I've seen it work before. But my caution was -make sure to also ask about how to increase revenues. Often we focus on the 'cost cutting' while forgetting you can still make money - when times are tough and not so difficult. Getting the creative juices of employees going can be a great win for any organization.

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Permalink Reply by Marita Loose on December 2, 2008 at 1:31pm

I like the idea of asking employees. But how about non-profit or public sector organizations? As a public school system, we don't have a revenue column to balance the cost cuts.

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