The Economy Improves! Now the Bad News For Your Project.

 

News continues to trickle in that the economy is improving slowly, and there are those in your organization who are looking to take advantage of this improvement.

Who are they? That answer in a second.

But first, answer these questions for yourself. During the Great Recession, have you experienced...

• Organizational leaders exhibiting behaviors that have made you lose trust in them?
• Lack of transparency in leader's communications?
• Being treated unfairly or unethically by your employer?

These questions matter. The factors noted are the top three reasons given by employees to seek new jobs as the economy improves (48%, 46%, 40% respectively). I would wager that your organizational leaders have had many opportunities during the extensive economic downturn to at least appear guilty of one of those factors.

So prepare for project workers to jump ship as soon as they can. You'll want to focus most of your effort on retaining top performers. To supplement anything that your organization is doing, you have some options. Among them

• Develop a better relationship with top performers with regular two-way interactive meetings (see recent blog entries on performance appraisal alternative)
• Find out the source of their work frustrations and help eliminate these
• Help with their career development
• Be honest and open as much as possible about your project, doing what you can to counter any untrustworthy behavior exhibited by organizational leaders.
   

Your behavior can be the reason a top performing worker stays in your project even though organizational leaders appear to be unfair, untrustworthy or unethical.