Executive Guidance for 2010: Confronting Six Enemies of Post-Recession Performance

Restructuring and downsizing over the past year have created an increased state of distrust, anxiety and cynicism among employees. This has translated directly into a rise in fraud and misconduct. Employees’ view of management’s integrity has decreased 5% while misconduct has risen at a startling rate of 20%. Given the grim employment projections for 2010, this complex scenario is likely to continue:

1. A perfect storm: lower confidence, higher misconduct, and stricter enforcement
   As if the heightened risk of misconduct and decline in employee engagement and productivity weren’t enough, tolerance for bad behavior is at an all-time low. Governments of most industrial nations are responding to public scrutiny over the cause of the economic downturn with a wave of new regulations—and perhaps more importantly—an increased zeal for enforcement. Today, a single investigation can put your company into crisis mode—adding brand and reputation damage to the mounting burdens of lost productivity.
2. Solving employee disengagement with visible ethics
   Employees view the actions of senior executives as actions of “the company." Building integrity and trust requires you to consistently model ethical behavior, deal decisively with misconduct and communicate openly. You must put corporate values into action to create a more ethical and productive work environment.
• Managers exhibiting corporate values can improve employee performance by 12%.
• Managers demonstrating ethical behavior can improve employee performance by 9%.

Confronting the Enemy

• Recognize and respond to the emotional effects of the recession on employees.
• Demonstrate personal integrity and intolerance of misconduct consistently throughout the entire organization at all times.
• Ensure that financial communications are frequent, frank, and focused on employee concerns.