Some small comfort can be derived from a recent study by Robert Half International, who interviewed 150 senior executives from the top 1,000 US companies.

The results suggest that employers in the United States are most worried about hanging on to good employees and bringing in even better new ones. Clearly not everyone is taking the path of least resistance, which is to fire willy nilly. Some people are taking a more long-term approach to the economic crisis, and thinking it through to its logical end.

Conversations that I have had with General Managers in China indicate that management here takes the same view as the respondents in the US, which is that this downturn will last another few months, and when the upswing happens companies had better be ready to start producing again.

When demand begins to rise again, keeping the people who have a proven capacity to deliver for you will be vital to regaining market share. If you lose some of your good staff now you will probably have lost them forever. Trying to get them back later this year will either be impossible, or very expensive.

When asked about their greatest staffing concern, almost 40% of respondents cited employee retention, which made it the No. 1 issue, versus 22% for the issue of recruitment. Productivity and employee morale were each named by 17% of respondents.

Each executive was asked, “What is your greatest staffing concern?” This is the overall response:

Retention - 39%,
Recruitment - 22%,
Productivity - 17%,
Staff morale - 17%,
Other - 3%,
Don’t know - 2%.