The British and Irish Lions roared in Australia and came home with a memorable test series victory. Warren Gatland, the Head Coach, had assembled players from Wales, England, Scotland and Ireland and with his supporting coaches developed them into a mighty team which produced a great result. Communication was a vital ingredient of the coaching programme.
The time is right for the leaders of companies in this great country to do the same. They have led their companies through recession when all manner of painful decisions may have been made including redundancy; pay freezes or even pay reductions; longer working hours often without additional pay to mention some. Now the economic gloom is lifting. The government and a number of economic organisations are predicting stronger growth; the private sector has created a million new jobs in the last few years; the new Governor of the Bank of England has declared that interest rates will remain low for some time ahead and the pound sterling has lost strength against the dollar and the euro giving a boost to Britain’s exporters.
The leaders of our businesses both large and small, if they are to seize the great opportunities which will come our way as the economy grows, need to ensure that their workers are up for more change and in a way that they are strongly motivated and ready to roar like the British and Irish Lions. This won’t be easy as many workers have become disengaged and/or demotivated due to changes over the last few years, many of which may have impacted on them negatively. One of the most important issues for leaders is good communications. When leaders start to talk about growth they will need to spell out in quite some detail what they want the workers to do to ensure the growth is achieved and what is in it for the workers who create the growth, including both financial and non-financial rewards. To get that message over leaders will need multi-media communication programmes such as IT systems, face-to-face meetings; focus groups, ‘walk the talk’; strong cascade message networks where information travels in both directions; newsletters and so on. They will need to convince the workers to follow the leader, become really engaged and motivated to meet the new goals. If this can be achieved British workers and British businesses will roar like the Lions.
Dr Hugh Billot, Deputy Chairman
HR GO Group of Recruitment Companies
HR GO Recruitment offers solutions to all your staffing needs, temporary and permanent, please call 0845 130 7000
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