Participative Management Essential During Recession
4/7/2009 By Steve Taylor, SHRM
Participative management practices such as quality circles, self-directed work teams and clear, two-way communication might be seen as methods of recovering economic health, but in an atmosphere of uncertainty, those practices have been abandoned at many organizations.
“Employers are clamming up and not talking to their own employees,” says consultant
Di Ann Sanchez, SPHR, of Fort Worth, Texas. “They’re not sharing the state of the union of their companies. They’re trying to fix it themselves.”Sanchez’s firm, DAS HR Consulting, specializes in small- to medium-sized businesses. “I tell my clients, ‘This is the time you should be doing the most to be meeting with employees.’”
But the response all too often is a closed door concealing a frightened CEO. “They’re used to being take-charge individuals,” Sanchez says. “In crisis times, they start saying, ‘I know best. I’m going to handle it, hunker down, make all the decisions. I’m not going to show fear.’”
