It may not be high on your list of priorities with Furlough ending and the struggle to survive and return to peak activity foremost in your mind.
Even if you have had to make some people redundant your reputation as an employer matters.
As your business hopefully returns to more normal levels of activity there may come a time when you will need to recruit more people, and that is going to be a challenge when there is a shortage of workers in many sectors.
While redundancy may feel like a brutal process to those on the receiving end, how it has been handled can make all the difference to your business reputation.
Did you keep staff fully informed? Did you follow all the correct procedures? Did those affected feel that you cared about them and their concerns?
We explained how to do it properly in this article:
But we were reminded that there is more to treating employees well when a CEO, as reported in the media, advised employers not to sack an employee for making a mistake.
Instead, he said, after his company had lost a large account, he started what he calls “the blameless post-mortem”, to see whether the company’s systems were at fault, rather than an individual.
In that instance the findings were that there had not been enough people in the sales team to enable each employee to take proper care of the clients that were under their responsibility.
There will be many other instances of things that can be done better in your business and if approached in the right way, with the engagement of employees, they are more likely to see your business as one they would be happy to work for and to pass that message on to others.
It’s not about the perks you give them but about how well you convey that you value them and understand their concerns too.