Charting Your Course

As the threat of falling back into a recession becomes more real with each passing day, employers are asking themselves, “What should we do now?” What makes it more challenging is that the trend in the most recent years has been slow recovery.

Employers may have designed a plan for that kind of recovery, but going back on it in light of current events may be the best decision for them to make. They must respond to the situation at hand, responding to the changes around them.

Human Resource Executive Online has several suggestions as to how employers should go about crafting a strategy.

• First, they should talk to whoever is in charge of setting strategy, goals, direction for the organization and ask them what the two most important uncertainties are right now.
• Next, employers should craft a two-by-two matrix of the uncertainties.
• After that, they should create the matrix with two rows representing the two outcomes for the first uncertainty and two columns representing the two outcomes for the second uncertainty.

The four boxes in the middle represent the possible states of the world associated with the two most important uncertainties. For each of these boxes, the employer should tell the human resource story associated with it, such as what will happen if the organization encounters the scenario in the box.

This tool is useful because it addresses uncertainty, shows how to think through a problem, and provides information helpful for planning and decision-making. It also provides employers with a useful and proactive task as they wait for the economy’s next move.

Human Resource Executive Online (09/12/11) Cappelli, Peter

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