Hey, Have you Heard? The Economy Stinks!

It's Friday and thank goodness it is finally sunny out. As of Wednesday, I thought I just might jump off a bridge! (The weather was that depressing here in Alexandria.) However, it looks like the weekend is going to be beautiful, so I'll be just fine.

The economy stinks and everyone is feeling it. We are entering our new Fiscal Year and budget cuts are coming down hard. Not in terms of personnel, thank goodness. But, possibly in how happy we'll be able to keep them. If you've read some of my previous posts, you might be able to tell that we're just a little bit spoiled here.

I think that the real trick, though, is going to be how to convince everyone that we are confident that we are making the right decisions to spend money on certain things. After cutting some benefits, how can we convince them that certain things (like snacks in the office) are necessary to sustain our culture, and that those things don't have a big enough impact on the bottom line to really impact the business anyway?

It has also been hard to convince certain members of the Executive ranks that HR is an area that can be "massaged" quite a bit when it comes to cost. Not everything needs to be so black or white; all or nothing. In fact, anything in HR usually is. So...don't just chop one of my programs, give me the opportunity to see what I can do to modify it to reduce the cost. I have now been allowed to do that - but it was quite the battle.

I'm certain that we're going to come out on the other side of this recession just fine. But, it's going to be a long road ahead. Wish me luck!