As I saw one of my old firms providing 'top ten tips' for HR in a recession which bordered on the facile, i.e. most obvious and bland I thought that I'd provide you with the real version, tongue-in-cheekly of course!
The Real top ten
1. Make sure you know the FD's children names and favourite holiday spots. Use all HR resource possible to find out as much as you can and stay close to the FD.
2. It's all about cashflow and for HR - budgets (but you knew that anyway right?). Make sure that whatever budget you have is the same as the one the FD sees - good for him/her to know that you're being proactive.
3. Proactively suggest (after some fag packet workings) across the board 15% HR budget cut keeping 10% in reserve (which will be asked for later on in the year).
4. Make sure you've identified your enemies in the line. Be prepared - a downturn increases negative political behaviour. Even better get your shot in first.
5. Time to finally bite the bullet and use the opportunity to get rid of that whingeing business partner who thinks the company would fail if she wasn't there. Now's the time. You may of course have more than one. Years of pain will be released - recessions are cathartic.
6. Get the Financial Times daily (if you don't already). Three important things. (i) keeps you abreast of economic/company pain; (ii) you can work out whether your CEO will survive this downturn and plan accordingly; (iii) it makes you look good
7. Make sure that you can gauge where the organisation is in terms of people management and employee engagement (using our solutions of course!) if you haven't already got a fix on these and their link with productivity and organisational performance
8. Focus on value-based HR support. 'Think' and 'do'. It's all about survival.
9. Keep a bottle of whisky in the lower drawer just in case!
10. Keep a pistol in the bottom drawer just in case!
