Breakfast doesn’t seem like much, but for April Fawcett Nagel, eliminating the free daily meal after providing it for employees was a tough decision. Despite how hard that decision was to make, it was just one small thing she had to do in order for firstPRO Inc. to move forward during the downturn.
“It’s just battling through the current economic challenges and the business model and adapting my business to keep it profitable and to keep everyone motivated and to weather the storm, the slowdowns, the peaks and valleys,” she says.
As founder and CEO of the executive staffing firm, she says you just have to have smart business sense and communicate more with your employees during this time. And she should know because she’s seen downturns before, yet has still seen success, having hit $34.6 million in 2008 revenue and landing a spot on the 2009 Inc. 5,000 list.
Smart Business spoke with Fawcett Nagel about how to effectively lead during a down economy.
Have a backup plan. It’s part of owning a business. If you don’t always have those rainy day plans and you’re not constantly evaluating the big picture and where your business is going to go as things change, [that’s a problem.] It’s not just economic changes but also the technology changes. The way we do business today versus the way we did it even as short as 10 years ago is so different from a technology standpoint. I’ve always felt strongly about keeping things timely and adapting as we go.
Nobody’s happy when the economy has a downturn or when you experience some new technological wave that your employees and you know it’s going to be a necessary part of your business, and you have to invest in whatever it is and implement it into your organization, which is time-consuming and costly. You’re never happy about those things, but when you look back and they are all said and done, it always makes our company stronger and makes all of us better businesspeople.
Communicate. In a bad economy, anything any employee is going home and wondering about or worried about is usually probably a lot worse than it actually is in reality. I’m for very open dialogue and being honest and saying, ‘This is what we’re facing, this is how we’re going to deal with it, [and] these are some of the changes we have to make to protect all of us as a whole.’ Everybody is well-versed long before the changes start.
Most of these people are fairly savvy. We’re business-to-business in our selling, and they know what a lot of their clients are up against. You have to talk. You have to tell people so they’re not going home assuming something much worse. Nobody can be productive if they’re worried about getting laid off or getting fired or losing their insurance or any of those kinds of issues.
Ninety percent of it is doing it, [yet] so many people don’t. Ninety percent of successfully doing it is actually having the conversation, having the communication, and after that, I think being honest and being specific and talking about the good and talking about the bad and maybe citing worst-case scenarios, forewarning them about some changes that may have to happen down the road if things don’t change or if things get any worse.