With all the re-engineering, downsizing, reorganizing, take-overs, mergers acquisitions, outsourcing, and other sure-fire strategies businesses are using to survive during a tough economy, it’s time for us to realize that our human resources hold the key to sustainable, long-term growth. Employees can offer solutions to problems, methods to improve productivity, creative ideas to improve products and services, and even insight on what management needs to do to move forward. That assumes, of course, that you have a workforce of people who want to come to work every day, ready to serve you and your customers, and that you provide an environment that encourages high performance. [Read more…]