Participative Change and Employee Commitment

Participative change is when the employee's are taken into confidence and are involved in Decision Making process. In these times of turmoil taking a black box decision on the course of action to avoid problems may be autocratic and swift and may appeal to intuition but may be totally counter productive. So it may be well advised to take decisions by involving the employees.

Take input from the employees that this is the situation of market and cash flows and that certain tough decisions need to be taken. Ask them that what they would have done if they were at the helm. In this way you could very well reduce some rancor and bitterness from the process of change which could be painful for some of the employees.

Communication and compassionate communication at the times of distress could in itself be a hidden boon and could reduce many of the problems hounding the management at such times.

Be Humane to the employees to be laid off as you would feel for some one of your own family. Talking is always great , but walking the talk is always difficult. So go for it, provide crash retraining to those being laid off so that they are multi skilled and less prone to failure after leaving your organization. This is also likely to improve the overall morale of all the employees post tough decisions and help in productively bouncing back once the flab is cut.