Business leaders should look at various techniques and approaches regarding effectively managing their personnel in 2013.

For the last several years of economic decline, the mantra has been to do more with less. In the coming year, managers should proactively look to provide incentives for employees as opposed to having the opinion that employees are lucky to have a job.

Highly skilled labor and technical professionals have an unemployment rate hovering around one percent and that provides workers with more options. If employers don’t become more employee centric, they run a great risk of losing valued workers.

Temporary workers

Business leaders are more likely to use temporary help in 2013. With pending healthcare measures coming to fruition, employers can defer many of these peripheral costs to staffing firms since they will be the official employee of record. This is a model that is being used consistently in Europe and takes much of the burden off employers to let them concentrate on growing profits rather than getting mired in bureaucratic red tape. Also, companies can use this measure to cut expenses and defer them to staffing firms instead of this affecting their respective bottom line.

Workforce planning

Companies need to outline plans more directly in 2013 than in previous years. In the past, companies have been more in a survival mode and have been as forward thinking as they will need to become more progressive conceptually.

Companies that are thinking only about the here and now rather than being contemporary and looking to outpace the competition will be companies at risk of going out of business in the next few years. Too many C level executives have been looking in the rearview mirror and their approach is counterproductive for long-term success. Unfortunately, this is the only way many executives have been conditioned to think and will be a major test for entities and the decision makers responsible for their long-term health and success.

Retaining key employees

Executives and business leaders need to start thinking of ways to reward employees’ longevity, successes and fortitude. If this isn’t enacted, employees will be playing musical chairs and seeing if the grass is truly greener on the other side. Staying in a job because you have to is much less appealing than staying in a job because you want to.

Leaders need to provide incentives to employees, such as rewards related to meeting milestones. Pay freezes, layoffs and other cost cutting measures have to be modified to acknowledge hard work instead of finding ways to cut costs and save money.

If these forward-thinking approaches aren’t successfully executed in 2013, companies are going to see valuable traction lost with employees not being placed at the top of their priority lists. Economic growth for next year isn’t projected to be huge but employers should have longer term vision for successive years that should reap more benefits.

Mike Barefoot is the Senior Account Executive at Red Zone Resources Staffing and Recruitment. Follow Red Zone Resources on Twitter (@RedZoneJobs) or go to www.RedZoneResources.com for more information.