Increase Touch Points

Film director Woody Allen famously said that 80 percent of success is just showing up. It’s difficult to stress enough the significance of forging a personal connection with your key people, especially in these times of uncertainty. When no one’s job is safe—and your top talent is too savvy to fall for cookie-cutter corporate assurances—just knowing that they’re not alone in a Darwinian fight for survival is a lifeline.

As mentioned before, Webcasts, e-mail blasts, teleconferences, virtual town hall meetings—all these cyberspace tools serve valuable communication functions. But none should replace the reassurance of actual person-to-person connection and interaction.

In 2008, facing a tough economic environment and fundamental changes in the media industry, Time Warner took steps to strengthen its competitive advantages by becoming a more focused content company. The company’s restructuring, including the spinoff of Time Warner Cable in early 2008, has involved streamlining its operations and reducing overhead to make its businesses as efficient as possible and free up resources. This has been a difficult process for employees across the company.

As part of an effort to engage high-potential employees, many of whom felt embattled, the company’s newly appointed CEO, Jeffrey L. Bewkes, held a series of six skip-level lunches, reaching beyond his direct reports and inviting groups of ten to twelve high performers several layers down in the organization—people who usually had little or no access to him. These employees were considered to be connectors and influencers and would likely share their luncheon experience—and the CEO’s words—with colleagues. In this way, a gathering for a few could have far-reaching impact.

These two-hour lunches were unscripted. The point was to have an open conversation that allowed Bewkes to take the pulse of the organization’s emerging leaders and permitted these highly valued individuals to get to know their new CEO.

The feedback from both sides underscored the importance of these lunches. Employees who attended reported feeling more “confident in the company” and described the CEO as being “open,” “approachable,” even “funny.” For his part, “the CEO was impressed by how much people cared about the company,” says Patricia Fili-Krushel, Time Warner’s executive vice president of administration, who organized the meetings. The lunches proved to be such a valuable use of the chief executive’s time that the company is continuing them in their divisions in 2009.

Skip-level lunches are an especially valuable engagement tool because they can be adapted to many circumstances. For example, in the face of clampdowns on travel, companies are leveraging their leaders’ travel itineraries to create touch points for key talent around the world.

Lynn Utter of Knoll insisted on preserving two core corporate events in 2008 despite their associated expenses. First, she refused to cancel Knoll’s annual leadership conference, where one hundred of its most senior managers convene. Second, Knoll not only held its midyear sales conference but also doubled attendance to include all of its three hundred salespeople.

“Knoll kept travel costs in check by opting for less costly venues than in the past,” says Utter. But the money and time spent were well worth it. For Utter, the meetings were an unparalleled opportunity for the company’s most influential revenue generators and team leaders to hear the company’s top leaders explain the strategy for the future, demonstrate their confidence in it and each other, and solidify a “we’re all in this together” camaraderie that would have been impossible to capture in a conference call.

Utter also upped her own travel schedule and that of her management team. Traditionally, she visits each Knoll plant or regional office in the spring. In 2008, Utter and her executive team did a second tour in the autumn. “It was so important that people see me and other key leaders, and that we were honest about what was working and where the company faced risks,” Utter says. Even more important was the degree of employee engagement she witnessed firsthand. “People raised their hands and asked me what they could do to help.” Despite pressures to reduce travel expenses, Utter’s aggressive travel schedule to connect with Knoll associates, dealers and customers continues in 2009.

DeAnne Aguirre, senior vice president at Booz & Company, notes that an increasing number of client companies have traveling executives spend time with valued local talent. “A CEO is traveling to the western region,” Aguirre says. “Instead of just showing up at the regional headquarters and holding a town hall meeting, the CEO might also go with a high-performing sales or account team to visit a client.” Her point: the CEO should do something that shows he or she is getting out in the field and rolling up his sleeves to help the top talent shine.

Encourage Affinity Networks

In distressing and discordant times, talented people need a home, a place to create strong bonds with their colleagues and the organization. Networking or affinity groups—grassroots, company-supported internal organizations that address the needs of a specific employee population, such as women, engineers, African Americans, or millennials—have proved a huge winner for employees and employers alike in this recession. These groups serve as secure havens for people who might otherwise feel adrift as their companies focus on survival. Affinity groups provide an outlet for employees to address what’s important to them, from celebrating their heritage to building professional networks to developing career skills. Many groups also offer nuanced learning opportunities. For example, women’s networks may teach negotiating skills, and millennial groups pair young members with senior mentors.

Yet many high performers don’t bother to participate, either because they don’t know that the groups exist or because they’re not aware of their value. By reminding top talent about the customized fit of these internal networks and their comfort zone attributes, leaders can point to another way the company cares.

As the economic downturn turned into a meltdown, GE’s Women’s Network enhanced its circle of support for female talent with a program called My Connections. Introduced in early 2008, the program requires regional senior leaders, dubbed “champions,” to sponsor local “pods”—groups of approximately twenty women who meet six to eight times a year. In addition to ensuring that up-and-coming leaders have a chance to meet other senior leaders, the pods provide much-needed personal connection during troubled times. “And that,” says Deborah Elam, GE vice president and chief diversity officer, “means people do not feel so alone.

Reaching Out a Helping Hand

A massive layoff is like a death in the family. It leaves survivors shaken and unbalanced—and needing to talk. Most organizations now realize that to expect remaining star employees to pick up the pieces and soldier on as though nothing has happened is not only unrealistic but also unfeeling. A badly handled layoff can sow bitterness and rancor that will fester for years. Although there’s no changing the underlying situation, showing genuine sympathy makes all the difference.

One of the most powerful actions an organization can take is to provide a safe outlet for people to vent their concerns and ask for advice. As the economic landscape shifted in 2008 and 2009, many organizations—especially those in the hard-hit financial sector—turned to their employee assistance program (EAP) for help.

Credit Suisse, for example, worked with Hewitt Associates, its benefits partner, to customize offerings that would help employees during prolonged periods of stress. They included classes on stress reduction, advice on how to live a balanced life, and even the basics of financial planning. “Many of our junior, younger employees have never lived through a deep recession and they need help recalibrating their lives,” explains Kathryn Quigley.

Ironically, top performers often are not aware of the existence of EAP services, for the simple reason that they’ve always done so well they’ve never felt they needed help. The first step for many companies is alerting top talent to this resource and describing what it can do.

High-level executives and managers are under unique stress. Not only are they subjected to the same uncertainty and fear as the rank and file, but senior leaders also feel pressured to hide such feelings so that they can convey a sense of strength to peers and people under them. No one feels secure when the boss behaves in a panicky way. But keeping feelings bottled up can seriously increase stress.

At Merrill Lynch, Subha Barry, managing director and head of global diversity and inclusion, understood this, and in 2008 she orchestrated a formal event to encourage Merrill’s leaders to address their stress. Barry moderated a panel of three of the firm’s most seasoned and respected leaders; all had worked through the downswings and upswings of business cycles and had fashioned hugely successful careers. In front of 150 of their peers and colleagues, they openly discussed the stresses and strains that taxed them daily and talked about what they did to get themselves through rough times. One reported successfully battling an addiction to sleep medication by taking up running. Another confessed he was so depleted at the end of the day that he was “speechless” when he got home at night—unable to carry on a conversation with his wife or share the stresses of the day. Not surprisingly, this silence was damaging his marriage. Says Barry, “We wanted people to feel, ‘My god, if one of the most successful leaders is standing up and talking about this, I guess it’s okay for me to verbalize it too.’ ”

Anxiety-inducing as it is, work isn’t the only source of stress for many star employees. Family responsibilities and health problems can also spike in troubled times, seeping into and exacerbating work-related stress. Sensitive employers find ways to support their best people.

In 2008 the newly formed women’s employee affinity network at Moody’s floated the idea of a backup child care program. When the idea was discussed at a series of companywide information sessions, however, most of the questions concerned elder care, not child care.

The company stepped up to the plate: in January 2009, dedicated centers for backup child care and elder care opened at Moody’s offices in New York and San Francisco. Resources were also made available for employees in other parts of the country. “At a time when we’re seeing cutbacks across the industry,” says Frances Laserson, “adding on a benefit is an extraordinary sign of the company’s commitment to employees.”

Ask and Ye Shall Receive

Often, reaching out and showing humanity brings unexpected rewards.

In the middle of 2008, as the world economic outlook darkened, Mona Lau decided to reinvigorate esprit de corps at UBS by holding an internal contest. “I contacted the chairs of all the employee networks around the world [there are more than twenty] and challenged them to come up with creative ideas to motivate employees and practice our core value of being client-centric,” recalls the global head of diversity and campus recruiting. “We asked people to focus on ideas that wouldn’t involve a lot of money but would engage people’s passions, hearts, and minds. The five top ideas would get funding and be implemented.”

More than twenty proposals were submitted from all over the globe. The winning ideas included creating a social networking initiative to connect UBS employees on international assignments or traveling for business with local UBS employees, and implementing a Hong Kong-based series of workshops on career planning for children of clients and employees. This and other winning proposals are on track to become a force for good, a business development opportunity, and a retention tool for UBS.

Pay attention and treat your talented people with respect—that’s what it all comes down to. As layoffs bite deeper into the payroll, the fate and future of organizations depend on the efforts of those who remain. Take care of them—and they will take care of you.