Confidence at Work – Recession Proofing Your Career or Your Business

When you know how to recession proof your wealth creation - whether you have a career or a business - it can be a great source of confidence. Here are some ideas to help you protect your income in difficult times.

Have you ever wondered why companies choose to make workers redundant rather than cut salaries? After all, it doesn't seem to make sense to get rid of the people they've invested in recruiting and  training when, if they keep those people employed, the company will have the talent to take advantage of rising demand when we pull out of the recession. Why not renegotiate the salaries and keep their team employed? That would also be a better outcome for employees and their families than facing redundancy.

Well studies show that employees' morale goes down when their salaries are cut and they respond by working less. Many people live up to and beyond their salaries so a general salary cut would also spread  misery. Business owners and managerment teams use redundancies to get rid of people who are not pulling their weight or who are destroying team morale. So employers prefer a small number of employees to be miserable by making them redundant than by upsetting the majority. Studies also show that redundancies boost the productivity of of the employees who remain because they are more motivated to prove their value. Apparently most workers would rather keep their salaries than save their colleagues.

What if there was a better way forward where employees and employers could win? I've got some recession surviving and thriving tips for you whether you are an  employer or an employee.

First of all, here are 5 secrets for recession proofing your career if you want to avoid redundancy, stay employed and thrive in difficult times:

1. Whatever expertise you have and whatever industry you're working in, look out of niches. What I mean by that is      areas where there is a lot of demand for people with skills, knowledge and experience and few people who have it. For instance, with one of my clients we identified that her company in the pharmaceutical industry was losing business because nobody was really skilled at putting effective teams together to bid for certain projects.  I shared with her some useful skills and she soon started to earn more bonuses for extra business the company gained. She was also able to fast track her career and later got promoted from business development manager to director of business development.
2. Recession Proof Your Career: Use Social Media tools like Linkedin to help you  get known for that expertise - it's free! If you don't know how to use Social Media for promoting yourself click here.
3. Successful people take charge of their  personal development - emotional intelligence and great communication skills can give you an edge over your more your difficult or less communicative colleagues. There's a saying that we get hired for our technical/professional skills and fired for our communication skills!
4. Take up every course opportunity related to your professional and personal development that your company offers you. When you gain more knowledge and skill it's like putting money in your bank account. Training is a valuable perk in your employment package.
5. Then, create a personal development budget to fill in the  gaps especially, if your company doesn't provide training. Private Life, Career and Executive Coaching is a great 21st century resource. It gives you the opportunity to talk about and get skilled in handling challenges you may not be able to talk about, or get the personal attention you need, at work. Life, Career or Executive coaching can help you get more clarity, focus and direction on how to:

• manage your anger, stress and procrastination and stay confident and motivated
• be more assertive and avoid aggressive or passive reactions to colleagues, clients, suppliers and bosses
• deal with difficult people, get the best out of others and create win-win situations
• get more recognition and reward for what you do
• make the right career choices and choose the next career steps for  you
• convert any training you've received in presentation skills, leading, managing, influencing and negotiating into mastery
• develop the confidence and skill you need to fast track, or downsize, your career or get back into work after a break

3 tips for Managers and Business Owners to help you survive and thrive in the recession:

1. Focus on building your team's morale to increase productivity and help you keep your talented people. I'm not talking about fixing up expensive outward bound team away days that are difficult to measure in terms of return on investment. I'm talking about the more every day things.
2. For instance, make sure that when someone does a good job they get the recognition they deserve and everyone hears about it. Weed out team leaders who make their team's life hell because of their poor leadership skills. If you want to keep them, give them 1-2-1 coaching with a coach who is skilled at changing people's attitude - it's 80% more effective than training in getting results.
3. Positvely and inspirationally engage your whole workforce in the task of helping your company to thrive rather than deciding things in high level meetings and handing down the bad news. A business owner I coached created weekly meetings where his team expressed their achievements, discussed their ideas for recession-proofing the business and brought referrals they had gained from tapping into their networks. Morale and productivity went up and the business owner tapped into resources in his team he didn't know were there before. For instance, his whole team, in effect, became his sales force and business development team because everyone was more aware of their potential to grow the business.

They say obstacles arise when we take our eyes off our goals. Let's keep focussed on creating a rewarding present and future.

I wish you health, wealth and happiness

Warm wishes

Madeleine

Madeleine Morgan uses NLP, coaching, personality profiling and training skills to help professionals, managers and business owners to create more rewarding lives, careers and businesses.

She is based in Cambridge UK and works locally, nationally and internationally in companies and at her coaching practice, face-to-face, over the telephone and on Skype.

She has over 20 years coaching and training experience and has worked with corporates, charities, SMEs and government organisations as well as 953 private clients who are mangers, professionals or business owners.

I like to reward action, so if you take the action to contact me I'll offer you a free no obligation Discovery Session to help you clarify where you are now, where you'd like to be and how to bridge the gap.

madeleine@growu.co.uk

mm@buildingselfconfidence.co.uk

01223 426392