Employers are feeling a sense of panic and madness. Not only are they trying to stay afloat, meet goals and run a business, but they are being more saddled than ever with regulations, guidelines, rules and laws. Just keeping up with the massive changes in the FMLA, ADA and COBRA that all went into effect within the last 60 days is placing an enormous burden on business.
I am telling my clients to stop…refocus….prioritize…and get back to the basics. That’s not to say that what has changed isn’t important…it is important and businesses need to know enough to know when to ask a question. But, I’m finding basic things like simple management training, employee handbooks, interviewing skill, workplace conduct training and the like are being left in the dust in favor of spending hours and hours on other less critical measures.
Companies will get into “trouble” in 2009 by failing to follow basic principles of common sense and fair treatment of their employees. It always amazes me to meet clients who are spending massive resources in time and money on things like talent management, organizational development, change management and leadership training and all the while those same managers can’t conduct an intelligent interview (and usually conduct an illegal one). There is no question that value rests with these other initiatives, but when they are at the expense of basic managerial skills, they can result in costly outcomes to business.
Be sure to check back because I’ll be providing many tips on how to refocus your organization for a compliant, and successful, 2009. When that’s in place, you might find that organizational development and leadership naturally follow.
-Karen Michael
KarenMichael, PLC