Managing in tough times

I was at a great lunch last week and listened to Terry Davis, CEO of Coca Cola, talk about his organisation's approach to managing through tough economic times.
Terry maintains that we are nowhere near the bottom of the crisis and at the moment it is still a "rich man's recession". His organisation however is looking at different ways of retaining staff. The cost of retrenching and then re-training is way too high, he says. Often companies retrench first and think later. He prefers to do a full employment review and to rely instead on making structural adjustments and encourage leave to be taken where possible.

Another speaker at the lunch, Joe Hockey, said that the recession is encouraging us to become a more compassionate society. We now need to reach out to others who have been disadvantaged and give them the message of hope that we will all get through this and become a better society.