Cyclope-Series Team Blog

Step into any office or place of business and spend some time eavesdropping on the conversations there. You will discover that the only thing that anyone wants to talk about is the recession. People are in constant discussion about what the recession means for them, for the places where they work and for the financial lives of everyone that they know. Is this ongoing conversation taking away from employee productivity? Perhaps to some extent we’re seeing a decrease in productivity because people are talking about the recession but for the most part the recession seems to be motivating employees to work more productively at their jobs.

A common phrase that you will hear around the nation today is, “well at least I have a job”. A few years ago when people would talk about their work, they would often complain about how they didn’t love what they were doing or they were working too much or they didn’t get paid enough. Today people just aren’t complaining about that. There have been so many people around us who have lost jobs because of the recession that most of us are just thankful that we have money coming in at all. We’re feeling a lot more loyal to our jobs because we’re grateful that we didn’t lose them when others were getting laid off.

This sense of loyalty is a major contributing factor as to why the recession is actually increasing employee productivity. People feel like they owe something to the places where they work for hanging in there with them through these tough times. Many businesses are trying to create a positive working environment by keeping employees apprised of the financial situation of the company and working with employees to retain as many jobs as possible. These environments encourage people to really give their all to working together through these difficult times and increase that emerging sense of loyalty.

Although this type of positive working environment is the ideal situation for a recession economy, it’s not the only type of business environment that is motivating people to be productive on the job today. We also often see the opposite environment in which fear is the dominant feeling inside of the company. People who are terrified of losing their jobs, particularly in companies where layoffs have been happening and there’s not a lot of communication about what’s next to come, are people who feel that they have to go the extra mile in their work right now because they don’t want their heads to be up next on the company’s chopping blocks. They’ll work hard because they feel like they have to but they won’t be happy about it.

Businesses that are dealing with issues related to the recession should take a look at these two models to see that there is a positive way to deal with maintaining employee productivity during this time. Those businesses that opt to create a positive working model for getting through the recession are likely to see productivity remain high even after the recession has come to an end. That’s because those employees who increased their productivity out of a sense of loyalty to the company will continue to feel loyal and to want to work for their place of business even as things improve. Those employees who were motivated by fear to get productive will go back to complaining about their jobs and wishing that they weren’t there which is something that is always bad for business!

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