With economists predicting fierce trading conditions and longer recovery than originally anticipated means that South African companies will need to seek out ways to sustain their business performance. After all, retrenching more people, or slashing other expenses, will mean that they will be left with skeleton resources. Or that those who remain will have no means, nor the will, to produce the necessary results.

Last year's national employee engagement research showed a staggering 64% were looking for new horizons within and outside the company. With a slow upturn of the economy and limitations on job mobility, this may mean that employees may become more despondent and even more unproductive. This research supports that employers face the danger of losing the valued, while retaining the non-contributing people.

One way of improving the bottom line without decreasing overheads and expenses is to improve performance. And here, employee engagement has emerged as an important strategy. And retaining valued employees is also a strategy for survival in touch economic times as it costs a great deal in money and time to advertise for replacements, interview prospective employees and train them once they come on board.

Hence, The Human Resource Practice is planning to repeat the national employee engagement survey in 2010 to better understand this employee engagement phenomenon within the South African context and how to improve productivity in the current reality.

Based on The Human Resource Practice's research and experience, the following broad practical implications should be considered to enhance performance and retain valued people in the context of a future upturn in the South African economy:

1. Attraction and retention strategies should focus on enhancing the meaningfulness of work and assisting employees to strengthen their individual resourcefulness to perform in these difficult times.
2. The employee value proposition should place more emphasis on personal levels for attraction of talent and on the organisational and job dimensions for the retention of talent.
3. Offer challenging work to current and prospective employees which tests peoples' resourcefulness, rather than merely appealing to organisation identity and values.
4. Transform the relationship between the employee and line manager to a coaching and mentoring role to support employees as they take on more meaningful work.
5. Build line management capacity to perpetually develop themselves on personal and interpersonal levels in order to encourage and support their subordinates' personal careers growth.
6. Partner with internal marketing specialist to devise creative media and methods to link organisational strategic priorities with individual performance goals.
7. Measure levels of employee engagement as a key input into talent retention and performance enhancement strategies. This may also enable the creation of an employee engagement culture.

This engagement has been positively related to productivity as engaged employees tend to perform better, which in turn assists the company to weather the economic crisis. Further, engaged employees are more likely to remain with their companies, ensuring it has the skills and experience to capitalise on the inevitable upturn.

For more information on the South African Employee Engagement (EESA©) Survey - 2010, contact me on ruwaynek@hrpractice.co.za.