Creative Class

It’s hard to be creative when you’re worried about your company’s survival or your own job’s longevity.

Indeed, 24 percent of Canadian workers are worried about losing their jobs (according to an Ipsos Reid poll reported in the Globe and Mail).

“We’re seeing concerns throughout all levels of the organizational structure,” said JB Aloy, employee researcher at Ipsos. “From managers, to technical specialists, to workers on the floor, there is a great concern across all career streams about what this crisis means for their job.”

Although I couldn’t find a survey, I would have to guess an even larger percentage of American workers are worried about being laid off (especially given that health care comes with your job in that country).

The Employers Association of Charlotte, NC believes that virtually all 860 of their members are worried about employee morale and productivity during these uncertain times.

Keeping employees focused and positive as business falters and colleagues are laid off is a top challenge facing most companies.

When people are worried about losing their jobs, they monitor the news while at work, they skim job boards while on company time, and they huddle in groups fretting. None of this is good for productivity.

I worked at a dot com in 2000-2001 and remember the anxiety first hand. Once senior management stopped communicating, except to give us an excuse as to why paychecks were delayed, productivity all but stopped.

It’s really hard to be creative and solve problems when you don’t expect to have a job soon.

How has this economy affected your workplace? Or your employer’s workplace-related decisions?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 10th, 2009 at 12:14 pm and is filed under Creative Class. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.