Retaining staff in tough times

I was in Abu Dhabi last month, and as most conversations today seem to revolve around the recession, I asked a systems integrator how his business was faring. He seemed almost oblivious to the repercussions of the downturn on any local company and said he did not know of anyone who had been laid off because of the recession.

Likewise, Abdul Hadi Al Sheikh, the CEO of Abu Dhabi Media Company’s LIVE arm stated that the downturn had had no impact on his company. In fact, unable to take on further jobs because LIVE was running at full capacity with four HD OB vans and more than 100 people, he stated that his company was going to invest another $14 million over the next two years to expand its fleet.

Also, Qatar launched a TV channel last month just to showcase its National Day celebrations and invested US $3million in putting up a studio and a portable kit for the purpose.

Qatar has also announced that it will begin marketing its Media City in the near future, while rumour has it that Oman TV is planning to build a huge broadcast facility soon.

Despite this, there is no denying that there has been a slowdown in the economy and lay-offs and some re-structuring is likely. However, this is the right time to support staff who stood by you and helped your company grow. The easy way out is to lay off staff but by adopting innovative measures, a company could retain their services and win their loyalty for life.

A prime example of this is India’s InfoSys, which encouraged some of its long-term employees to take a one-year sabbatical to work with an NGO and be paid 50% of their salary, while the other half would be paid by the latter. While this was not directly connected to the downturn, big companies could adopt similar measures to retain long-term staff.

One local distributor, who wanted to launch a services arm, decided not to shelve the project. Instead, he decided to restructure the roles of some of his employees so that they could take on additional responsibilities at the new arm. According to him, the new project will help him retain existing staff. The new arm needs strategic planning and time to set up and this time is ideal, as sales are down and staff are not as busy as they would normally be in this season. The new arm may not ring in profits now but most teething issues would be sorted by the time the market is up again.

At this juncture, ITP’s Broadcast & Media Group has also launched a new venture. As part of our New Year gift to our readers, we have launched a website (www.digitalproductionme.com) designed to be a one-stop guide to content production and broadcasting in the Arab world. The website will be up and running in the first week of January 2009. Stay tuned!

Vijaya Cherian is the editor of Digital Studio.

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