With unemployment rates at 6.5% in the UK, 10.4% in Ireland, 8.1% in the US and rising, these figures can make for depressing reading. However, if you look at them in a more positive light they indicate that employment rates are between 89% and 93%.

This raises the interesting question of what are we currently doing to motivate this retained work force? Has employee engagement effectively been put on hold? Was “the war for talent” really just a myth?

Of course businesses need to cut costs in order to survive, but once this ’survival strategy’ has been achieved, business leaders will need to focus on employment rates if they are to formulate their ‘winning strategy’. To do so, they might like to consider the following:

• Continue to manage talent within the organisation. The war may be at a temporary truce, but talent will always find opportunity and as the economy recovers, talent can quickly migrate.
• Re-engage and motivate the retained work force. Organisations should be looking to realign goals and objectives, develop managers as change leaders, continue to focus on the full range of reward mechanisms, measure employee engagement with more cost effective tools and provide targeted opportunity for development of their people.
• Reward business ideas and innovation. Only by harnessing entrepreneurial talent will organisations beat their competitors in the economic recovery.
• Align and develop your senior leaders for current and future challenges. History has many examples of exceptional leaders who come to the fore in times of conflict or economic hardship - however, it also shows us that many of these individuals were far less successful when leading in times of peace or economic prosperity. Organisational leaders need the competency and agility to both survive and grow.

Unemployment rates may be an ongoing challenge for governments, but it’s the employment rates that are the real challenge for business leaders.