Keeping employees engaged is critical during an economic downturn. Here are some smart ways to do it.
In the months after September 11, as business activity slowed to a crawl, Steve Kerr, then the chief learning officer at Goldman Sachs (GS), launched a leadership seminar for senior managers that he nicknamed “Motivating Without Money.” The daylong sessionsdiscussed how Goldman’s managers could use nonfinancial incentives to energize their staff. While well received, the seminar was discontinued when business perked up again a year or so later.
Last fall, however, Goldman brought it back, widening the audience to include Goldman’s clients. (It’s now called “Motivating Your People in a Challenging Environment.”) “We got more people than I expected,” recalls Kerr, now a senior advisor to the bank and author of a new book, Reward Systems. As for why bonus-obsessed Wall Street hotshots would be so receptive to his “money isn’t everything” message, Kerr says: “I guess any reward in tough times is valuable.”