Leaders of SMEs – How will your employees feel about you and your organisation once Covid 19 is over?
Suddenly, those who could keep their jobs and never worked from home could, a sweet reduction in commute for some but balancing homeschooling and full-time childcare offered its own stuff of nightmares. There are mixed stories of employers appropriately offering to sponsor technical equipment and other support needed by their employees and those who do not. Anecdotally some managers are phoning their employees on the hour to check how much work they have done. Some placing their people on furlough and planning redundancies as soon as the scheme is over. Fix one problem, create a multitude.
As a leader of SME, how do you want to be remembered during this time? Without meaning to and without realising it, the father treats his child as cruelly (or kindly) as the child within himself (Miller, 1983). Your response may be driven by the looming economic hardships with huge losses of revenue and myriads of increased costs (as well as having to provide safe sanitation and personal protective equipment for those who can open to the public).
Assuming a leadership intention as one of integrity, remove judgement and work towards the preservation of your people, a business is just an illusion without them.
Our advice at ELEOS is don’t go it alone; this is the time to bravely open up some communication space with your employees and see how the collective can help to navigate this pandemic together. Those SME leaders who (in isolation) carefully curate and present their cost savings plan often meet a wall of silence in response and damage so much goodwill and social capital which was well won but irrevocable once lost. Most of your loyal employees are currently in a primitive state of fight or flight mode, hence are often willing to step up and do whatever is necessary to keep their jobs and organisations open and will do as much as they can possibly do. Once you can be clear about what the main short and medium term issues you see, check what aspects they are concerned about and find a way to work together which all of you can resolve. I know of employees volunteering to take pay cuts to keep their jobs or finding innovative ways of diversifying into areas of higher consumer demand. Assuming a leadership intention as one of integrity, remove judgement and work towards the preservation of your people, a business is just an illusion without them.
Why not work with your people and make them feel part of the future, not waiting at home nervously for your next announcement. Crucify them now with hasty decision making in isolation and you will find yourself with a huge loss of knowledge which leaves once they can.
References
Miller, A. (1983). For your own good: Hidden cruelty in child-rearing and the roots of violence. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux.
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