Thriving in Tough Times

Thriving in Tough Times: a local approach

Braving frost and snow, business leaders turned out for a breakfast seminar with a difference, run by local Ascot-based consultancy, Lamont Associates on Thursday October 30^th.  Full of fun, the seminar dealt with the serious question of how to thrive in the current climate and it demonstrated some practical tools for upping performance and engagement.

The temptation for many companies at present is to react in a hasty, knee-jerk manner, cutting salaries, increasing workloads and creating unsustainable pressures to ‘work harder’.  All this dampens motivation, generates fear and results in mundane performance and lack of engagement.  The so-called remedies actually make the situation worse, as research shows that cost-cutting measures are not sustainable.[1]

 “We are committed to helping local businesses not just survive, but thrive in these challenging times. Our experience is that most businesses are sitting on vast untapped resources. When a company knows how to bring out the best in its people, tap into their inner strengths and release those resources into the business the performance goes up dramatically. Creativity, innovation, solutions, enthusiasm emerge from people and translate into increased turnover, increased profit, increased productivity  and increased engagement. The credit crunch is the opportunity to start doing things differently.’ With a new process of working and eight tried and tested, simple tools Lamont has already helped local businesses achieve growth whilst going through difficult change.

“Many people we meet are feeling apprehensive  so we decided to offer a short, energising seminar to provide local business leaders with three tools they could  apply as soon as they got back to the office that morning, to raise the level of ease and effectiveness.” said Georgeanne Lamont, MD of Lamont Associates. ‘Teams that have used these tools invariably report higher levels of well-being and engagement. And we would like Thames Valley  businesses to have these tools and the competitive edge they can bring.’

Many businesses fail to realise that high employee engagement in crucial in creating success.  On its own, high engagement creates an average increase in operating income of over 19% - while low engagement can see operating income drop by over 30%.[2]

As companies are being forced to look for sustainable business advantages, Lamont Associates is increasingly finding that its clients are looking at their in-house resources, namely their staff, and ways of developing a thriving culture, that brings out the very best in every employee, regardless of rank and title. 

Developing a passionate, motivated staff is one of the cornerstones to success. 

According to the participants, the event left them feeling “motivated and uplifted” and provided tools that work “at a very practical level in terms of the exercises and the outcomes”.